What happens when China's most prominent photographers put their signature works together for a single grand event? Visitors to a new exhibition, China, Portrait of a Country, can decide for themselves.

1981, Beijng women get their hair permed at a new salon. [China Daily]

Running at the Today Art Museum in southern Beijing, until Dec 21, it displays more than 50 photos by 44 award-winning photographers aged from 26 to 90.

Arranged in more or less chronological order, the exhibition retraces the major events that have shaped New China since 1949, says curator Liu Heung Shing, an American photo-journalist-turned cultural entrepreneur.

Many of the pictures are on display for the first time, not because they had been hidden before but because "only a limited number of people had reason to be aware of their existence," says Liu.