- Serica Initiative
- Nov 5
- 6 min read
Updated: Nov 6
Spanning thousands of miles and reconstructed over hundreds of years, the Great Wall is a icon that has withstood the force of China's changing history. At dawn, it ripples through the mist like a dragon’s spine — and a young, trailblazing National Geographic photographer, Michael Yamashita, is there to catch its breath.
Our story begins several years following the opening of China when Michael Yamashita, a third-generation Japanese American from New Jersey, graduated from Wesleyan College in 1971. Hoping to learn more about his roots, he immediately departed on a trip to Japan that lasted for four years.
“I became a photographer because I was snapping pictures and sending them back home to family and friends, to show people what I was doing,” Yamashita said, recalling his beginnings as an amateur photographer. Enthralled by photography and travel, his early projects took him across Japan and Singapore, before joining the National Geographic Magazine in 1979, which took him on his first trip to China in 1982—and his first stop, the Great Wall of China.
“Nobody really knew China in ‘82,” Yamashita recalled. “I remember thinking, 'This is such fertile ground for stories. This is all going to be gone soon.” An early witness to the metamorphosing face of China, Yamashita’s photographs documented the ephemerality of daily life in the country. His projects, which often traced legendary journeys and paths, from Marco Polo to the Mekong River, captured not only its sweeping landscapes, but also the rich lives surrounding these settings: their history, their present, and their fast-changing future.
"I have always been interested in the most remote sections—the edges—of China...the rural, peasant China," Yamashita said, as it was where traditions often survived the longest. Looking back now, he notes that his photos are of a China that largely, no longer exists.
(Re)-Encountering the Great Wall
"Every one of my stories over the years—some aspect of it has touched the Great Wall," Yamashita said. Encountering the Great Wall, his latest book released in July 2025, revisits photographs mostly taken from the late 1990s to early 2000s, as well as from his initial trip to China in 1982. Released in commemoration of the People's Republic of China's 75th anniversary, his book preserves images of a time largely before China’s tourism boom. On a trip revisiting Beijing last year to celebrate the occasion, Yamashita returned to the Great Wall and the sites of some of his most famous photos.
“It has turned into a tourist Disneyland,” Yamashita said. “Simitai, which used to be part of the ‘Wild Wall’—they had built a whole water town, so exact in detail, that if you didn’t know what the real thing looked like, you’d think this is it.” When Yamashita had initially travelled to Simitai in 2003, it was feared as an incredibly dangerous section of the Wall.
“You could easily kill yourself,” he said. In fact, he recalled how his fellow Great Wall journalists and explorers, Peter Hessler and William Lindesay, had both fallen and seriously injured themselves traversing the Wild Wall. Home to the steepest sections of the Wall, including the 80-degree slope of the “Heavenly Ladder,” which Yamashita had precariously climbed in order to photograph a view of Beijing, the life-and-death Wild Wall that he had tamed no longer existed—instead, it had been transformed into a “tourist madhouse.”
You might assume that Encountering the Great Wall purely documents the Wall, of the thousands of miles of its structure that traces across China. But like many of Yamashita’s projects, Encountering the Great Wall is just as much about the lives that dwell under the shadow of the Wall. Indeed, in many of the photos, the Wall is often a hidden feature in the background—a purposeful touch from Yamashita, who wanted to evoke his own journey tracking its path across China.
“That was a big surprise: you’d be following a map and it’d disappear, and then suddenly—boom, there it is! It would make my day,” he recalled.
Though the wall sometimes faded into the background, Yamashita also captures its sometimes unexpected uses in the livelihoods and lives surrounding the wall. At the Luan River in Hebei, the structure of the Great Wall served as part of the dam that created the Panjiakou Reservoir. Subsequently, parts of the wall, as well as the farmland that originally surrounded it, sank underwater.
“It buried their livelihood,” Yamashita said, speaking of the local farmers of Panjiakou. “But they were able to adapt, to be fishermen.” Beyond adapting, the submerged sections of the Wall transformed into reefs abundant with fish, which allowed the locals of Panjiakou to make an even better living as fishermen than they had as farmers.
Over 300 miles away in a village in Shanxi province, shepherds had found another use of the Great Wall. By digging a hole into the Great Wall, they created an ancient, yet utterly mundane gate for their sheep pen.
In the Age of Change
In the 40 years since Michael Yamashita first captured the Great Wall, much has changed in China—and much has changed for him, too. Beyond his days as a fresh college graduate and amateur photographer in Japan, Yamashita has created a legacy as a storyteller documenting the scenery, culture, and changes happening across the world, especially Asia. During his time at the National Geographic, perhaps his most well known, he made history there as one of the first contributing photographers of Asian descent.
“My brand has been ‘East meets West,’” Yamashita said. “I have been doing these stories [about Asia], mainly for a Western audience. I have seen my career as an ambassador for both sides.”
As photography undergoes a rapid transformation in the face of the Internet, for Yamashita, there continues to be a need for those to tell these stories. With nearly 2 million followers on Instagram, frequent appearances as a speaker and educator, and early success adopting his photography to the NFT market, Yamashita has been lauded as one of photography’s top influencers. He appears to have seamlessly transitioned his content into this new age. However, he has also struggled with challenges presented by these new technologies—from social media algorithms favoring short videos instead of still photos, to new AI tools cannibalizing the commercial photography industry, “in a very short time, photography has changed to the point where making a living is pretty impossible,” Yamashita lamented. For many of his colleagues, they have chosen to retire, rather than extend the pained struggle to survive against these new waves of technology.
Nevertheless, in spite of the “doom and gloom” that often shadows conversations about the future of photography, Yamashita also recalled the time when he started as a photographer, when "everybody said, ‘Nah, print’s dead. No more LIFE Magazine, no Look…Don’t start. It’s too hard, it’s too difficult.’” In fact, National Geographic was one of the only major photography magazine publishers left.
Indeed, he believes that these new technologies have also created a colossal improvement in the accessibility of photography. With the Internet as an outlet, there has never been a better time to show off your work and have it reach a global audience. With the excellence of the phones of today, everyone already has an incredibly powerful camera in their pockets.
“There’s always a need for that photograph. Somebody is going to need a real photograph. Whatever the new medium is going to be, I believe there is always going to be room for talent,” Yamashita affirmed.
As Yamashita cements his legacy as one of photography’s greats, and a trailblazing ambassador for the changing stories of Asia, he maintains that his work is yet to be done. With new projects upcoming, including a trip to Tibet this December, Yamashita hopes to continue documenting the changing landscapes of culture and country across Asia.
Though many of his images depict a history that has long disappeared, Yamashita’s photographs will live on, as a project is undergoing to archive his oeuvre for posterity. In partnership with the Reignwood Foundation, over half a million of Yamashita’s photos, one of the largest individual collections of photographs of China, are being digitally archived, in hopes that a museum can be opened to document the 40 years (and counting) of China’s most explosive growth period.
“My goal is to keep these photographs alive,” Yamashita said. From capturing the beauty of the natural landscapes, to the traditions of the people living in them, Yamashita’s photographs breathed life into untold stories—many of which were lost to time marching forward.
But Yamashita doesn't fear the unyielding wave of the future: “Everything has changed. But the story hasn’t changed.”
All images © Michael Yamashita
