Concrete Reflections, Shanghai (2018–Present)

Concrete Reflections documents the evolving urban landscape of Shanghai — a city defined by continual demolition, redevelopment, and renewal. Working with medium-format film cameras, Anthony Reed captures moments when light and structure briefly align to reveal the city’s shifting form. The tactile qualities of analogue photography — its grain, tonal depth, and deliberate pace — lend the work a sense of stillness and observation that contrasts with the speed of urban change.

Elevated vistas, mirrored façades, and damp underpasses appear as quiet studies of a metropolis in transition. At times, a solitary figure enters the frame — a passerby or worker whose presence reasserts the human scale within this vast environment. Reed’s approach is measured and observational, merging architectural documentation with a cinematic sensitivity to atmosphere and time.

The series reflects Shanghai’s ongoing transformation, capturing the tension between permanence and change that defines life in one of the world’s most rapidly evolving cities.