This photo essay represents a story about one individual’s experience traveling the 400 miles of the Yangtze River valley in 1999, documenting the way life was before the reservoir buried 13 cities, 140 towns and 1,342 villages. There was the distinct feeling of living in a Russian existential novel - watching people go about their daily routines all the while knowing that soon their lives will be forever changed as they are forced into an uncertain future.

After the Second World War, 150 000 prefabricated homes (“Prefabs”) were built in the most heavily bombed towns in the UK. Targeted at, and designed for, homeless young families with young children, these “palaces for the people” (as they were called at the time) were synonymous not only with comfort and luxury but also with freedom from the cramped and unsanitary urban housing of pre-War Britain.