The Chairman and I have travelled throughout and around China for over six years. What started out as a light-hearted project changed direction on the day I met Comrade Gu Ping and listened to him recount his time during the Long March. He had been Premiere Zhou Enlai's wife's bodyguard during this time and I sat listening to his story from the edge of my seat.

After this interview I made sure that my series of photographs were done with respect as I would never want to embarrass anyone who respected the Chairman. Or gave me their stories.

Many of the older folk I've met have already passed away, as is the case with Comrade Gu Ping and a good portion of the ex-soldiers who fought alongside the Chairman against both the Nationalists and the Japanese. It pleases me to think that they might still be immortalized in history, if only for a little longer, through their random meeting of a strange Westerner travelling with a statue of Chairman Mao. I'm also pleased to think that because of these six years I have a unique snapshot of a China that has all but disappeared.

The majority if my photos have been taken of the masses, the people in the fields and in the countryside, those who have been, for the most part, forgotten or ignored by the fast pace of modern China. They are always the ones who had time to take a moment out for a photo with the Chairman, as the city-dwellers were mostly too busy for non-commercial endeavours such as mine.

Whenever possible, I would ask the people who had lived through these times about the Chairman's influence on their lives. Each and every one of them said that their lives became dramatically better after the Chairman came along.

It is my hope that anybody who picks up this little red book of my photographs will enjoy these moments that I have tried to capture and appreciate the amazing people I have met along the way.