In July 2024, Chinese photographer Niu Tong was staying with a friend in Beijing, caught between job applications and his mother’s worsening cancer, when he learned he had been shortlisted for the 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, 27, told Sixth Tone. He was the fourth Chinese photographer to receive the recognition since the award’s founding in 1979.

The honor was a bittersweet moment. Niu was shuttling between studying in the northwestern city of Xi’an and his mother Ye Ju’s hospital bed in his hometown of Nanjing, capital of the 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 shortlisted series, “The Express Delivery Project,” was both inspired by his mother and built around her experience. According to the official citation, the work captures daily life in China’s express delivery sector at a time of slowing growth, following what the jury called a “golden decade” of expansion in logistics and e-commerce.

The project began in 2020, after an argument. 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, he joined the station himself, posing as an intern to watch over her and quietly observe the environment he was beginning to consider for his graduation project.

At first, Niu found himself constantly pulled between the delivery station and his studies. Once he was able to fully immerse himself in the project in late 2021, when his mother moved to a new delivery station, he worked and lived there for an entire month.

Initial photography attempts met resistance. The owner suspected Niu of investigating malpractice, while employees didn’t understand why they were being photographed. But this resistance unexpectedly fostered more communication between Niu and his mother, who often had to explain his work to others.

His mother became his guide into this world, accompanying him after shifts and helping him connect with workers. “They trusted her because they knew her character,” Niu said.

The turning point came when he photographed his mother using a large-format camera during winter break. When they enlarged the portrait, they could see Niu’s reflection in her eyes. They agreed that shooting portraits felt more solemn and respectful, and it would become part of his ethos as a photographer. This shot, meanwhile, would later become his mother’s funeral portrait.

Over time, Niu realized he was not documenting China’s broader logistics system, but individual workers. Around 2021, his portraits began focusing on workers’ stories, their work, and living conditions.

At school, this approach was met with limited understanding. While his teachers acknowledged that he’d identified a relevant social issue, they remained hesitant to endorse his direction, worried that the focus would provide too narrow a perspective on the industry. “You can’t fully convey the psychological experience or your relationships with workers,” Niu said. “Teachers only see the final photos and judge based on that.”

When his mother was diagnosed with cancer in 2022, Niu took a leave of absence from school and focused exclusively on shooting what he wanted to shoot.

During this time, he developed the themes that would later become his Leica-shortlisted series. This period also provided his longest continuous time with his mother, during which he came to better understand her career choice — one that reflected a generational experience. She had been born in a small village in the eastern Anhui province and moved to Nanjing around the age of 16 to work in factories, until she was laid off. During their conversations, Niu’s mother emphasized the practical benefits of factory work: she earned over 1,000 yuan ($140) more per month than comparable jobs, and received medical insurance and a pension. She also valued the community she’d found among coworkers from similar backgrounds, some of whom she had recruited herself.

Some of Niu’s other subjects’ described sentiments that resonated with his mother’s own. One, a female courier who Niu captured sitting in a red raincoat, told him she had previously worked as a food delivery rider, constantly rushing through the city, until she was injured. The courier station, she said, felt like “shelter” by comparison.

Niu eventually shot over 400 large-format negatives. For his graduation, and later for the Leica award submission, he organized the work around three themes: seasonal changes from one winter to the next, the significance of Spring Festival, and the “reverse migration” of workers back to their rural hometowns. He then selected 20 images for submission.

But during his mother’s decline in health, Niu found himself using his camera less. “We photographers understand that getting a photo means that moment is already past, already lost,” he said. “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.” He could only document traces — her hands, scars, rashes, and the effects of chemotherapy. “The experience was particularly harsh and heavy,” he said.

His mother made her own funeral arrangements, requesting her ashes be buried in a park or scattered in the Yangtze River, but not returned to their ancestral village. After visiting her hometown during her illness, she found she could no longer adapt to rural life.

Niu’s mother Ye Ju passed away in early 2025. Niu finds comfort in her having witnessed him receiving recognition for his work, which many said dignified the lives of laborers. She also saw him secure a university teaching position, which she considered a respectable, stable job. “I think she would have been proud,” Niu said. “Her life of instability finally enabled my own stability.”

Since her death, Niu’s life has taken on a slower pace. He resigned from his teaching post, moved to Shanghai, and now only visits delivery stations around once a month for ongoing observation.

His focus has instead shifted to writing as he reconsiders the role of photography. “For me, photography quickly shows you surfaces and lets you be drawn to an image,” he said. “It’s an opportunity, a key that lets you unlock deeper stories.”

Crucially, he also needs time to process his grief. Nearly a year after his mother’s death, certain moments still overwhelm him. He recalls how, in her final days, she complained of something causing pain in her back. He would help her up, search, and find nothing, yet she insisted something was there. They repeated this pattern multiple times.

“Later, after an interview in a small village, I was on a hard-sleeper train back to Xi’an,” he said. “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.”

Asked what the award ultimately means to him, Niu said, “It cannot resolve individual pain, whether your own or others’ ... But it can open a door, allowing you to see others’ lives, and to glimpse your own reflection.”

(Header image: At the end of the Chinese New Year, a courier leaves his hometown once again to return to work in the city, 2023. All photos courtesy of Niu Tong)