In this photo-essay about the little-known Chinese city of Chongqing, Manuel Alvarez-Diestro paints a grim, almost dystopian view of the city. The pictures are amazing and he really succeeds at conveying his view of the city.
Under further scrutiny, one quickly realizes that the conditions under which this city has been photographed have been carefully chosen to support the artist's vision and there may be more to it than meets the eye.
The real question is: how much of the real experience of living in that city those images convey? I personally don't have the answer to it but that's an interesting question to ask.
Before I became a professional photographer, I was always skeptical of the power of images to really convey a story, but now that I have a much deeper understanding of how images are constructed and specifically how radically editing can change an image, I can't help but look at it with a cynical eye and think that while the images look beautiful, that grim look is carefully crafted. I bet that by carefully choosing the locations, the kind of weather and with deliberate editing, one could make it look like Disneyland, all unicorns and rainbows, and a quick image search (and the picture above) will show circumstantial evidence of that.