An inveterate vagrant who flirts with pictures and words, Tom Carter spent 2 straight years backpacking a groundbreaking 35,000 miles across all 33 Chinese provinces, and was named "one of China's foremost explorers" by The World of Chinese magazine. His first book CHINA: Portrait of a People (2008, Blacksmith Books, Hong Kong) has been hailed as the most comprehensive book of photography on modern China ever published by a single author. He is also the editor of Unsavory Elements (2013, Earnshaw Books, Shanghai), an anthology about foreign expats in China. Carter contributed photographs to a critically acclaimed Chinese-language travelogue authored by his wife Hong Mei about their year backpacking together across India. Most recently, he penned the illustrated biography An American Bum in China (2019, Camphor Press, Taiwan). Tom Carter was born and raised in the City of San Francisco, graduated with a degree in Political Science from the American University in Washington, D.C., and has called China home since 2004.
MEDIA REVIEWS OF TOM's BODY OF WORK:
CHINA: PORTRAIT OF A PEOPLE
"Tom Carter is an extraordinary photographer whose powerful work captures the heart and soul of the Chinese people." -- Anchee Min, author of Red Azalea
"Tom Carter's photo book is an honest and objective record of the Chinese and our way of life... his camera leads us through 33 wide-sweeping scenes of the real and the surreal." -- Mian Mian, author of Candy
"One of China's most extraordinary explorers." --The World of Chinese
"Unless you want to undertake your own two-year trek through some of the mainland's most difficult terrain to take your own shots, this is a study well worth having on your bookshelf." -- South China Morning Post
"It's a remarkable book, compact yet bursting with images that display the diversity of a nation of 56 ethnic groups." -- San Francisco Chronicle
UNSAVORY ELEMENTS
"Great vignettes from world class writers...a celebration of the outsider's experience in China, in all of its juiciness and fetid rancour." --Time Out Shanghai
"Although other anthologies have featured outstanding journalism about China by Western writers, Carter's collection is the first to focus on the wide-ranging experiences of foreigners living in China." --China Daily
"The authors, mostly experienced writers who have traveled widely in China, offer tales beyond those of the usual laowai experience." --Shanghai Daily
"The result is a highly readable, often humorous, and at times brilliant book that is unerringly direct: the authors gathered together here do not shy away from troublesome issues." --Asian Correspondent
"The title dis-serves them...the range, humor and insights in this book place it among the best of its kind." --Asia Sentinel
AN AMERICAN BUM IN CHINA
"Painfully hilarious...the escapades Evans experiences are the stuff of legend." -- Des Moines Register
"His story serve(s) as a cautionary tale for anyone who may believe that China needs Americans more than Americans need China, using Evans' misadventures as an example." -- Muscatine Journal
"Tom Carter does very well to draw out Evans' story, to capture the declining towns of the Midwest, to narrate his friend's exploits with humor, pithy realities, and insight, and to emphasize the political significance of China's events. His prose is deft and his observations show an excellent knowledge of what he speaks." -- The Beijinger
"Even the most ardent defenders of fiction will be forced to admit: you just can't make this stuff up...there is a page-turning quality to the book based on the simple, foreboding question: just how bad is this going to get?" -- Los Angeles Review of Books' China Channel
