Putting Shanghai in focus

"People used to say if you came to China for a week, you would go home and write an article. If you came for a month, you would write a book but if you came for a year, you wouldn't know what to say about China anymore," she says.

"I think that is not true anymore. I think, particularly in the art world, there are many more people in the West engaging with China. You don't have to be a China specialist to know what is going on."

The book contains photographs by Chris Steele-Perkins, a member of the prestigious Magnum photo agency, former Getty photographer Andrew S Wong, and up-and-coming camera artists such as Kai Z Feng, a 29-year-old Shanghai photographer whose work has been published in Italian Vogue and Vanity Fair.

It also has some quirky pictures, including ones taken in 1902 with a pin hole camera made from a cigarette case.

H.S., who has now given up photojournalism, said the important thing is that the book tells the story of the journey Shanghai has made across three centuries.

"Shanghai is perhaps the most symbolic city in representing what China has achieved, maintaining its Chinese character but also embracing Western science and knowledge and it is this that this book has tried to document," he says.