Twenty-seven-year-old Chinese photographer Niu Tong was staying with a friend in Beijing in July 2024, juggling job applications while dealing with his mother's worsening cancer, when he received life-changing news. He had been shortlisted for the prestigious Leica Oskar Barnack Award, one of the photography world's most respected honors for documentary work. "When I finally opened the message and saw I'd made the shortlist, my mind went blank," Niu told reporters. He became only the fourth Chinese photographer to receive this recognition since the award's founding in 1979.
The honor came at a bittersweet time in Niu's life. He was constantly traveling between his studies in the northwestern city of Xi'an and his mother Ye Ju's hospital bed in his hometown of Nanjing, the capital of eastern Jiangsu province. "In July, she seemed well enough that I thought we might go to Germany for the ceremony together," he said. "But by October, she was too weak to travel."
His award-winning series, "The Express Delivery Project," was both inspired by his mother and built around her experience working in China's delivery industry. According to the official citation, the work captures daily life in China's express delivery sector during a period of slowing growth, following what the jury described as "a golden decade of expansion in logistics and e-commerce."
The project's origins trace back to 2020 and a family argument that would change both their lives. Niu, then a photography graduate student, had just learned that his mother had taken a job at a local delivery station. Worried about her health—she had previously injured her back working in a factory—he tried to talk her out of it. When she refused to quit, he made an unusual decision: he joined the station himself, posing as an intern to watch over her while quietly observing the environment he was beginning to consider for his graduation project.
Initially, Niu found himself constantly torn between the delivery station and his academic responsibilities. It wasn't until late 2021, when his mother moved to a new delivery station, that he was able to fully immerse himself in the project. He worked and lived at the station for an entire month, documenting the lives of China's delivery workers through his lens.
The early days of photography at the station were challenging. The owner suspected Niu of investigating workplace violations, while employees couldn't understand why they were being photographed. However, this resistance unexpectedly brought Niu and his mother closer together, as she often had to explain his work to suspicious colleagues. "His mother became his guide into this world, accompanying him after shifts and helping him connect with workers," the documentation shows. "They trusted her because they knew her character," Niu explained.
A pivotal moment came when Niu photographed his mother using a large-format camera during winter break. When they enlarged the portrait later, they discovered they could see Niu's reflection in her eyes. This intimate detail led them to agree that shooting portraits felt more solemn and respectful, becoming a core part of his photographic philosophy. Tragically, this particular photograph would later serve as his mother's funeral portrait.
Over time, Niu realized his work wasn't documenting China's broader logistics system, but rather the individual stories of workers within it. Around 2021, his portraits began focusing specifically on workers' personal narratives, their daily work experiences, and their living conditions. This shift toward intimate storytelling marked a departure from traditional documentary approaches to industrial subjects.
At school, this personalized approach met with limited understanding from faculty. While his teachers acknowledged that he had identified a relevant social issue, they remained hesitant to fully endorse his direction, worried that such a focused perspective would provide too narrow a view of the entire industry. "You can't fully convey the psychological experience or your relationships with workers," Niu reflected. "Teachers only see the final photos and judge based on that." When his mother was diagnosed with cancer in 2022, Niu made a decisive choice: he took a leave of absence from school to focus exclusively on photographing what truly mattered to him.
During this period away from formal education, Niu developed the themes that would eventually become his Leica-shortlisted series. More importantly, this time provided his longest continuous period with his mother, during which he came to better understand her career choice—a decision that reflected a broader generational experience of rural-to-urban migration in China.
Through their conversations, Niu learned about his mother's background and motivations. She had been born in a small village in eastern Anhui province and moved to Nanjing around age 16 to work in factories, until she was eventually laid off. During their talks, his mother emphasized the practical benefits that drew her to factory work: she earned over 1,000 yuan ($140) more per month than comparable jobs, received medical insurance and pension benefits, and valued the community she had found among coworkers from similar backgrounds—some of whom she had personally recruited to join the company.
Niu discovered that many of his photographic subjects shared sentiments that resonated with his mother's experience. One particularly memorable subject was a female courier whom Niu captured sitting in a bright red raincoat. She told him she had previously worked as a food delivery rider, constantly rushing through the city streets, until she suffered an injury. The courier station, she explained, felt like a shelter by comparison to the frantic pace of food delivery work.
Throughout the project, Niu shot over 400 large-format negatives, building an extensive archive of images documenting the lives of delivery workers. For his graduation project, and later for his Leica award submission, he organized this vast body of work around three central themes: seasonal changes from one winter to the next, the cultural significance of Spring Festival in workers' lives, and the reverse migration pattern of workers returning to their rural hometowns during holidays. From this extensive collection, he carefully selected 20 images for his final submission.
As his mother's health declined, Niu found himself using his camera less frequently. "We photographers understand that getting a photo means that moment is already past, already lost," he explained. "After her cancer diagnosis, I could barely bring myself to use the camera. In her final days, I couldn't lift any camera, not even my phone." Instead, he could only document traces of her illness—photographing her hands, scars, rashes, and the visible effects of chemotherapy treatments. "The experience was particularly harsh and heavy," he said.
In her final months, Niu's mother took control of her own funeral arrangements, making specific requests that reflected her life's journey. She asked for her ashes to be buried in a park or scattered in the Yangtze River, but specifically requested they not be returned to their ancestral village. After visiting her hometown during her illness, she found she could no longer adapt to rural life—a poignant reflection on how urban living had fundamentally changed her.
Niu's mother Ye Ju passed away in early 2025. Despite the profound loss, Niu finds some comfort in knowing she witnessed his recognition for work that many said dignified the lives of laborers like herself. She also saw him secure a university teaching position, which she considered a respectable and stable career. "I think she would have been proud," Niu reflected. "Her life of instability finally enabled my own stability."
Since his mother's death, Niu's approach to both life and work has fundamentally shifted. He resigned from his teaching position, moved to Shanghai, and now visits delivery stations only about once a month for ongoing observation. His focus has moved away from intensive photography toward writing, as he reconsiders the role of photography in storytelling and social documentation.
"For me, photography quickly shows you surfaces and lets you be drawn to an image," he explained. "It's an opportunity, a key that lets you unlock deeper stories." However, he acknowledges that he needs significant time to process his grief and the complex emotions surrounding his mother's death and his artistic success.
Nearly a year after his mother's passing, certain moments still overwhelm Niu with unexpected emotion. He recalls how, in her final days, she would complain of something causing pain in her back. He would help her up and search for the source, finding nothing, yet she insisted something was there. They repeated this pattern multiple times, a memory that would later trigger his own profound moment of connection to her experience.
"Later, after an interview in a small village, I was on a hard-sleeper train back to Xi'an," he recounted. "I couldn't sleep. The top bunk was cramped, so I made a support with the blanket and lay on it, writing. Around 2 or 3 a.m., I felt a dull pain in my shoulder blade. I searched but found nothing. At that moment, I experienced this resonant pain and completely broke down, crying heavily. There are many small moments like this. I need a very long time to process and contain this pain."
When asked about the ultimate significance of receiving the Leica award, Niu offered a thoughtful reflection that captures both the limitations and possibilities of artistic recognition. "It cannot resolve individual pain, whether your own or others," he said. "But it can open a door, allowing you to see others' lives, and to glimpse your own reflection." This perspective suggests that while awards cannot heal personal loss, they can serve as bridges connecting individual stories to broader human experiences, creating opportunities for understanding and empathy that extend far beyond the original artistic intent.
