A young man skating in front of a statue of Chairman Mao Zedong. [Photo by Liu Heung Shing/China Daily]

ScoP is located in the West Bund art district. Together with the neighboring Long Museum, Yuz Museum and West Bund Art Center, the cluster makes up Shanghai's equivalent of a Museum Mile.

The Xuhui district in Shanghai invited Liu to move from Beijing to Shanghai in 2014, suggesting he use the 500-sq-m building, which was designed by award-winning architects Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee, as his workshop. As a photographer who works mostly outdoors, Liu decided to turn the space into a museum.

"There are already a few photography galleries in Shanghai, but as a museum, which is a nonprofit facility, we can present exhibitions that no one else is capable of," he says.

The museum celebrated its opening in May, and the opening exhibition featured Jin Hongwei's private collection of Photography from the 20th Century, which included many of its most celebrated images by masters such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray and Guy Bourdin.

Currently ongoing at ScoP is a major exhibition titled Grain to Pixel and it features the development of photography in China through the past century. From works by some of China's greatest photo artists of the 20th century, to those by leading figures in China's contemporary art scene and fashion photography, the exhibition showcases the evolution as well as the possibilities of photography.

In a glass cabinet at the exhibition hall, black-and-white pictures of Chinese landscapes taken by western explorers and travelers in the early 20th century are on display. A walk through exhibition hall takes visitors from vintage photographs to those taken in the digital age when artists try all possible media platforms and methods available, including photoshop, artificial settings and theater effects.

"They are from different contexts and schools of thought, and all these photographers have created outstanding pieces, without being restrained by any framework of ideas," Liu says of the exhibition.

If you go

Grain to Pixel: A Story of Photography in China

When: Sept 6-Nov 30

Where: Shanghai Center of Photography, 2555-1, Longteng Avenue, near Fenggu Road, Xuhui district, Shanghai.

Contact: 8621-6528-9516