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The Yellow River, China’s second-largest river, flows through nine different provinces. It is said to be the origin of ancient Chinese civilization, and is filled with historic and mythological significance.

Inspired by Zhang Chengzhi’s novel “River of the North”, Chinese photographer Kechun Zhang spent years photographing landscapes along the river. The images, published in his photobook “The Yellow River”, seem like a mystical journey through quiet, otherworldly moments along the river’s many foggy sceneries.

“Along the way, the river from my mind was inundated by the stream of reality. The river, which once was full of legends, had gone and disappeared”, writes Kechun Zhang in his afterword. While his transient photographs emit a calm spirituality, they also capture the damage, the pollution, the sabotage that the river and its sceneries has had to suffer. And yet there is little defeatism to be found in the book. In the midst of the vast, overwhelming, almost surreal scenes, Kechun Zhang makes sure not to succumb to pessimism. “As a vast country with a long history”, he writes, “[China’s] future is always bright.”