Shangri-La: A Century of Looking Back — Photographing Environmental and Cultural Change in Southwest China

Before and After in the Mountains of Southwest China.

What happens to a place over one hundred years? Shangri-La: A Century of Looking Back answers this question through the lens of a camera. This striking visual volume brings together historical photographs of China’s southwestern mountains—the legendary landscapes associated with Shangri-La—and sets them beside contemporary images taken from the same vantage points-19.

The result is a powerful visual dialogue between past and present. Glaciers retreat. Villages grow and change. Roads carve through valleys that once took days to traverse. Yet the enduring spirit of the land and its people remains, captured in Moseley‘s patient, documentary-style photography.

What you’ll find inside:

• A century in photographs — Historical images from early explorers and missionaries paired with modern re-photography from the same locations

• Environmental change made visible — Witness the retreat of glaciers, the shifting of treelines, and the impact of development on sacred landscapes

• Cultural continuity and transformation — Tibetan, Naxi, and other ethnic communities documented across generations

• A photographer‘s pilgrimage — Robert K. Moseley’s decades-long engagement with the region, culminating in this comprehensive visual record