Liu is attuned to the role of orchestrated photography in political drama, propaganda, and social control. Trained as a professional photographer, Liu turns his camera on his countrymen to show their current individual and historical collective circumstances. In his expansive series The Chinese, Liu presents professional actors, statues of historical figures, and real individuals from across society. For two miners, a trip to a bathhouse follows their shift in the coal mines of North China. The naked men engage the viewer in a vaguely erotic scene. The dark water suggests the isolation of working underground, while their grimy skin and glassy eyes attest to hours of tedium and danger spent in dark tunnels. Liu’s photographs serve as his indictment of Chinese history, viewed with deep skepticism.