Lou Dan pictures locals with whom he lived for half a year from a valley in Yunnan province with the collodion process. The collodion process is an early photographic process, invented by Frederick Scott Archer. It was introduced in the 1850s and by the end of that decade it had almost entirely replaced the first practical photographic process, the daguerreotype.

Luo Dan was born in 1968 in Chongqing, China, and graduated from Sichuan Fine Art Academy in 1992. He was given the Gold Award for Outstanding Artist at the Lianzhou International Photography Festival in 2008 for his body of work “North, South” (2008). In 2011 he was the recipient of Tierney Fellowship, awarded the Hou Dengke documentary photography prize, voted best new photographer at the Dali International Photography Festival and Top 20-2011 China Contemporary Photographer. He currently lives in Chengdu, China.