St. Simons Island photographer Bill Zorn found far more than just threatened scenery in a journey to China's Yangtze River valley.

Chinese police were concerned about Bill Zorn.

The American carried a heavy, large-format camera, not like the compact types most tourists toted.

He lugged cases of equipment, wasn't listed on any scheduled tour and trekked in places where a relocation plan was stirring social unrest.

The authorities were curious and had questions.

So they interrogated Zorn and his crew - his 19-year-old son, Nicholas, and their native guides.

They confiscated Zorn's film and developed it, but later returned his work - all but 50 exposures, mostly shots of abominable Chinese bathrooms and the ruins of cottages vacated by the relocation.

"They thought we might be journalists or activists trying to get material for a story," Zorn said. Rather, Zorn was just documenting history.

In a controversial plan to dam the Yangtze, the world's third longest river, China wants to control destructive flooding and harness power. Two million people will be displaced.

Zorn answered the Chinese policemen's questions.

Then he and his son left the country with images of those soon-to-be displaced people and the land their ancestors have lived on for centuries.

This month, he will show their faces in his first exhibit in Savannah.

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Zorn calls himself a landscape photographer.

But he's a people person, too - skills he honed over 10 years as an emergency room physician in Brunswick.

"As an ER doc, you manage the gamut of human experience - from a precipitous birth to an obstinate hangnail to heart attacks," he said.

"The good physician not only treats the illness, but also takes into account the person."

And they take into account not only the person, but also their families, friends and support groups.

"Being trained as a family physician, I feel that I'm probably more sensitive to that," Zorn said.

Now, retired from medicine, Zorn's workplace is the outdoors. His always-at-his-side aid is a camera, not a stethoscope.

But he still dispenses orders.

Examining one of his prints, he recalled how he had relaxed Chinese villagers with a few fun commands.

"Don't stand so stiffly," he joked with them as they gathered to pose for a picture.

They didn't understand. Zorn reverted to a universal language - body language. He shook and shrugged his torso to entice them to ease up.

It elicited gap-tooth smiles and crinkled noses from the elderly. Click.

Zorn captured their image on a 4-by-5-inch negative.

He stood a 4-year-old pig-tailed girl atop a stool in her village and - click - snapped her attitude, which, translated in American, said, "You talkin' to me?" or "You want to start something?"

The girl's never seen a car, Zorn said.

He asked a man to pose in a window and snapped him resembling Rodin's "The Thinker." Brooms fabricated from twigs leaned against the home's crumbling wall.

There's a similarity between his old and new professions.

Medicine taught him to learn efficiently, which he applies to his art.

Practicing medicine gave him authority, which he applies to people - always using it with care and his soft-spoken voice.

"I'm not afraid of dealing with people on a personal level, of bridging walls we put up around ourselves," he said. "I've done that a lot."

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In China, a Polaroid camera was Zorn's crowbar into the native's intimate attitudes. He'd snap a photo of mother and son and give it as a gift. He'd take a shot of a grandmother and granddaughter and hand it over for good.

Then, he'd bend below a black cloth attached to the bellows of his sturdy view camera, study the glass that projects the image upside down and backward and capture the villagers in black and white.

Those, he kept for himself.

Once working in a high-tech profession that demanded speed, Zorn chose for his new career a slow-paced art that works on traditional technology, similar to the style of renowned photographer John Sexton.

Zorn has studied with Sexton, a photographer who started out as Ansel Adams' assistant and technical advisor and is known for his meticulous approach to the technical processes, some would say mysteries, of black-and-white photography.

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Several years ago, Zorn saw photos that were created by a group of accomplished California photographers working to stop the Glen Canyon Dam, which was completed in 1962.

Zorn saw those shots close to the time he had heard about China's Three Gorges Dam and knew he wanted to head to the Far East to document history as well. Controversies surrounding both dams were similar, but Zorn didn't set out to make a political statement, he said.

Rather, he was attracted to China because it was a challenging place to travel to and was still an exotic location in this much-explored world.

"And documenting this area that was going to be lost seemed to have worthwhile meaning to it," he said.

"It had landscape and a human story."

In March, he headed toward remote China, far from rural Jesup, Ga., where he was born 47 years ago and learned to play guitar, and far from St. Simons Island, the coastal town where he lives now.

He returned with a visual record of what's about to vanish - landscapes and an ancient culture that he documented in his straightforward style.

"I'm a dispassionate observer," he said. "I'm not seeking to promote or defeat a cause.

"I'm recording in an artistic manner part of China's heritage and the world's heritage that will be lost."

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When other artists describe Zorn, they tack on a well-worn word used to describe people who pay attention to detail, refuse to leave well-enough alone and who must have everything just so.

They use the word "perfectionist."

Perfectionism is not a trait necessary for one to be an artist, but it's just an apt word to define Zorn's style, said Pat Weaver, a potter and director of The Glynn Art Association on St. Simons Island, where Zorn is a member.

"He works and reworks and reworks his photography until it's perfect in his mind," Weaver said.

"I think he's very specific in what he sees and he wants it to be perfect before he puts it out there for others to see."

Zorn draws out detail. Look closely and study each strand of cobweb in a winery window.

He makes shadows meaningful.

In Weaver's words, his prints are balanced and beautifully perfect, completely. Zorn's images elicit emotions in Weaver, sometimes sadness, sometimes laughter.

"I feel something from looking at it," she said.

In a recent art association exhibit, Zorn won first place for the Chinese winery and an honorable mention for a St. Simons live oak, both black-and-white photos.

He handed the $100 prize back to the association. It will be used to school a high school student in photography.

"It's the local art association. I'm not in it to make 100 bucks off them," Zorn said.

"And I don't believe in competition in the arts, anyway.

"I didn't enter it to win. I don't know how you can say one is a winner over another one. It's all subjective.

"There's not a finish line."

There is one though for the people being relocated by the Three Gorges project. Thankfully, Zorn caught them in the race to the end.