Over the past two decades, urbanization in China has advanced at remarkable speed. Real-estate development once served as a powerful engine of economic growth, producing urban space on an unprecedented scale. Beneath this prosperity, however, large numbers of developments across the country were left stalled when construction stopped for various reasons. Many had been launched hastily. They now stand as silent “monuments” to the disorder of capital-driven development, exposing the destructive force embedded in the pursuit of profit. Frozen in time, these structures remain like wounds in the urban fabric, registering the social cost of unchecked expansion.

These wounds echo Guy Debord’s critique of the “society of the spectacle.” Within the capital-led production of urban space, grand projects once promoted as symbols of modernization can, when confronted by material constraints, quickly fall into ruin. Their failure exposes the fragility of the commodity-fetish logic and capital-driven narratives that sustained them. That fragility is then borne by real lives: stalled developments have shattered the expectations of countless ordinary homebuyers, leaving them to bear the consequences of the pursuit of profit while their savings remain entombed in concrete and steel. It was against this background that I began Unfinished Lands.

Unfinished Lands focuses on the widespread presence of stalled developments within China’s urbanization. Using a 4×5 large-format film camera, I photograph examples scattered across the country. Through these sites, the project asks viewers to consider the entanglement of capital, development, and individual lives, and to examine the symptoms of the present that these unfinished places make visible. The work seeks to keep this social issue within public view and open to continued discussion.