PHOTOS: What China Looks Like Without People

By Bridget O'Donnell

Hungarian photographer Bence Bakonyi recently made a six-month journey to China, documenting cities and rural areas he discovered during his travels.

Starting in Shanghai, Bakonyi slowly made his way west towards Lanzhou, with a final stop in Hong Kong.

But instead of the usual photos of crowded megalopolises, Bakonyi decided to capture photos that showed empty environments, as a way to express the isolation he felt during his travels.

The series, titled "Segue," represents his journey through China.

"I tried to find my home in a world completely unknown to me," Bakonyi wrote on his website. "And because home is where one can find himself, the photographs can also be seen as self-portraits projected onto China."

Bakonyi tells Business Insider he didn't use Photoshop with any of these images. Instead, when he found a scene he wanted to photograph, he waited for the area to empty out and would then take a photo.

The resulting images are an eerie, almost surreal look at a country which is home to more than 1.4 billion people.

"I would like [it] if my audience [could] see how I felt myself in China without Chinese language, because almost nobody speaks English," Bakonyi told Business Insider.

Bakonyi took to rooftops, trash dumps, tourist sites, abandoned landscapes and deserted countrysides to capture his photos.

[Images via Bence Bakonyi, h/t Business Insider]

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