Hai Bo was born in Changchun, China, in 1962. He received his BA from the Fine Art Institute of Jilin in 1984, and studied at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. While originally trained in printmaking, in the 1980s Hai Bo turned to photography, which became and remains his primary medium. Much of his work focuses on the passage of time: his early series They and Them address this theme through a juxtaposition of group portraits taken during the time of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) with photographs presenting the same sitters and arrangement taken today. By revealing how time has left its mark on these individuals, these photographic diptychs cast into relief both the temporal and cultural divide between China then and now. Hai Bo pursues this same thematic thread in his ongoing project on his hometown in northeastern China; in Four Seasons, he re-photographs himself sitting under the same tree at different times of the year to highlight not only the change in seasons but also his own aging process. In his more recent work from the late 2000s, Hai Bo turns his camera to the elderly villagers of his hometown to present a moving reflection on time and mortality.

Hai Bo's work has been the subject of solo exhibitions organized by the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in 2010 and the Beijing Commune. He has also participated in numerous major international exhibitions, including Mapping the Earth and Mind in Chinese Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photography from New China at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Between Past and Future: New photography and Video from China co-organized by the International Center of Photography and the Smart Museum of Art, among many others. Hai Bo was the recipient of the Chinese Contemporary Art Award in 2000, and in 2011 he was named the Martell Artist of the Year. His work is held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, National Art Museum of China, Guangdong Museum of Art, Queensland Art Gallery, and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, among other institutions. He lives and works in Beijing.

TL