Mei Jin creates images of striking power and authority.Born in Shanghai , China in 1949, Mei's formative experiences were shaped by the Communist Party's seizure of power and Mao's tightening grip over the Chinese people.

As a teenager, she experienced the Cultural Revolution from a perch in China's most cosmopolitan city. Her father managed a camera factory. He was an engineer, designing Chinese cameras from European models. He taught Mei the mechanics of photography, and she often developed her own black and white photos, shooting with one of the cameras made in her father's factory. None of Mei's early photos survive.

For many years, Mei worked in a factory in Shanghai that made fabric: usually cotton and linen, though not silk. She rose to the rank of inspector. She rarely took photographs after her fathers death in 1968. In China , the act of photography seemed slightly rebellious to her and she never wished to upset the authorities.

In the mid-1990s she met a Chinese American and married him in 1997, coming to the San Francisco Bay Area. Mei frequently travels throughout the american west and china , photographing natural things and, especially, flowers. In addition to her taste for the natural, she likes abstract images, such as a detail shot of an old piece of wood, where at first you don't know what you are looking at. Mei is exploring a new freedom in the U.S. and expressing her encounter with America through her photos.