Chang Chien-Chi reveals abstract concepts of alienation and connection in his work. His collection of portraits made in a mental asylum in Taiwan, caused a sensation when it was shown at the La Biennale di Venezia (2001), the Bienal de Sao Paolo (2002) and printed in the book The Chain (2002). The shocking, nearly life-sized photographs of pairs of patients literally chained together resonate with Chang's jaundiced look at the less visible bonds of marriage. He has treated marital ties in two books - I do I do I do (2001), a collection of images depicting alienated grooms and brides in Taiwan, and in Double Happiness (2005), a brutal depiction of the business of selling brides in Vietnam. The ties of family and of culture are also the themes of an ambitious project begun in 1992. For 16 years, Chang has photographed the bifurcated lives of Chinese immigrants in New York's Chinatown, along with those of their wives and families back home in Fujian. A work in progress, China Town is shown here for the first time. Among many other publications, his work has also been published in I Grandi Fotografi Magnum Photos Chien-Chi Chang (2006).

Chang's investigation of the ties that bind one person to another draws on his own deeply divide immigrant experience. Born in Taiwan, Chang studied at Soochow University (BA 1984) and at Indiana university (MS 1990). He joined the prestigious photo agency Magnum in 1995 and now lives with his wife in Taipei and in New York City.

Vicki Goldberg is the author of Light Matters: Writings on Photography (2005), The Power of Photography: How Photographs Changed Our Lives (1991) and editor of Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present (1981). In 1997 she was the recipient of the International Center of Photography's prestigious Infinity Award. For over a decade, Goldberg wrote regular articles on photography and the arts for the New York Times; she continues to write numerous books as well as articles for Vanity Fair, Aperture, American Photo and other publications.

Xiang Biao, PhD, is a Research Council United Kingdom Academic Fellow at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford. Studying migration and social change in China, India and Australia over the last decade, he is the author of Transcending Boundaries (Chinese, 2000; English, 2005), Global 'Body Shopping' (2006), Making Order from Transnational Migration (forthcoming) and over 30 articles in both English and Chinese.