Liz Hingley works as both photographer and anthropologist, and that double formation shapes Sacred Shanghai, her 2019 book from GOST Books. The subject is the spiritual life of China’s largest and most cosmopolitan city: the ceremonies, gathering places, and communities — sanctioned and unsanctioned, public and private — through which belief persists in a dense urban setting. Hingley photographs across temples, churches, mosques, and less easily classified sites, treating each as a lived environment rather than a curiosity.

The book observes rather than argues, which is central to its approach. Hingley’s anthropological discipline is evident in the sustained attention she gives to routine practice and to the material settings in which it unfolds; her photographs allow communities to define themselves on their own terms, avoiding the visual shorthand that often accompanies pictures of religion in China. Ian Johnson contributes accompanying text that addresses the same terrain, presented in both English and Chinese, extending the book’s attention to its subjects across languages.

As a physical object, Sacred Shanghai has been carefully considered: 224 pages bound in hardback with a paper-covered, foil-debossed cover, a restrained presentation suited to the quiet register of the photographs within. The sequencing moves between official and unofficial, public and private forms of devotion, allowing connections to emerge across the book rather than within any single image.

For collectors interested in contemporary documentary practice, in the intersection of photography and anthropology, or in the textures of religious life in urban China, this is a title worth knowing. It records a city’s spiritual fabric at a particular moment and does so with the patience of a long-term observer.