2007, young couples take part in a kissing contest in Sichuan. The media read it as "a sign of the changing times". [Qiu Haiying]

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.

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.

Liu insists his perspective is far removed from the usual Western stereotype of China.

The most eye-catching photos are those shot by veteran "red-color news soldiers" (propaganda photographers) like Meng Zhaorui, Li Zhensheng and Weng Naiqiang, depicting people's fervent admiration for late Chinese leader Mao Zedong; those by Hou Bo that reveal the private lives of Mao and his family; and Du Xiuxian's photos of Mao and other Chinese leaders at grand and solemn occasions.

Noteworthy in another way are Xiao Zhuang's photos showing everyday folk at key times in the history of New China; Jiang Shaowu's disturbing photos of chaotic and cruel scenes during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76); and Liu Heung Shing's photos capturing the emergence of non-official artists like the Stars Painting Group in the late 1980s; and photos by younger artists on a wide range of social topics, including migrant workers in manufacturing plants, the staging of the Beijing Olympics, the launch of the Shenzhou spacecrafts, the boom towns and the consequences of industrial pollution.

"It is a very impressive exhibition and shows a great variety of Chinese society's latest history," says the CEO of Mercedes-Benz China, Klaus Maier, who has lived here for several years.

"This single exhibition gave me an insight into China and its people in a broad context."

Young Chinese visitors like Xie Nan, in her early 20s, also found the exhibition inspiring.

"It looks like a vivid visual history textbook, brief but informative," she says.

As Xie was born in the 1980s "so many pages in the history of our motherland appear so faraway and strange to me," she admits. Having a new understanding of the country's turbulent past may give youngsters like her "a clearer understanding of how China has come to be what it is today".

Curator Liu invited most of the participating photographers to an opening ceremony of the exhibition that coincided with the 30th anniversary of China's opening up and reform.