Wild Grass grew out of a memory and a question. JT, who grew up in a small town in southern China during the strict enforcement of the one-child policy in the 1980s, witnessed a newborn girl abandoned because of economic hardship. In 2014, while travelling, he met “left-behind children” whose resilience stayed with him, and he began to wonder what had become of that infant. That wondering became this project: a documentation of children’s lives in official and unofficial orphanages across China.
JT spent extended periods living among the children, and the photographs record what these institutions contend with — funding shortages and a lack of specialised knowledge for caring for children with physical or mental disabilities. The pictures do not turn away from the reality of the situation, yet they portray the children’s lives with interest and dignity, granting them attention rather than spectacle.
An afterword by JT gives the title its argument. These lives, he writes, have already been scripted by circumstance — harsh conditions, an unclear future, existence as “forgotten phantoms.” Labels such as “misery” and “suffering,” he suggests, may be interpretations shaped by mainstream values seen through a humanitarian filter. Being outside mainstream society can mean having no social frame of reference, which may shelter these children from some pain and let them thrive like wild grass. The book’s form echoes this: it is kept unusually dark, with some photographs visible only from the right angle and occasional pages left completely black.
La Maison de Z published the book in September 2024: 320 pages, five-colour printing, softcover with embossing and foil stamping, hand-sewn in a hollow-spine binding, 18.5 × 26 cm. The edition is limited to 800 copies, and because a substantial amount of make-ready paper serves as filler, the 800 copies are each unique. The series won the Gold Prize at the International Photography Awards in 2017, and Wild Grass shared the Grand Prix at the Maribor Photobook Award in 2025 with Julia Mejnertsen’s HUN, credited to JT as photographer. It opens a trilogy that continued with Curse of the Wind: A History of Leprosy. For collectors, the interest lies in a documentary book whose sequencing, deliberate darkness and unusual production bind argument and form together.
