Canadian Magnum photographer Christopher Anderson’s latest series ‘Approximate Joy’ takes as its subjects strangers on the streets of the great Chinese metropolises of Shanghai and Shenzhen. None of them realise that they’re being photographed, so they’re shown without poses or other forms of self-awareness: Anderson shoots candid close-ups of faces, every now and again a hand, or a fragment of the urban landscape, lit by glowing fluorescents and juxtaposed against the moody grey-blue haze that hangs over these cities at night. ‘I have seen the future,’ says Anderson, ‘and it is now and it is China. There is no need for the past. It can be erased. A new happiness is being constructed, an approximation of joy, better than the real thing.’

More information at: Danziger Gallery