A salt lake in Dallol, Ethiopia, is the main source of income for locals. [Photo by Jun Cheng/provided to China Daily]

Jun Cheng has visited Africa's Great Rift Valley eight times since 2011 to record the ecology, humanity and geology along the 6,000-kilometer-long trench.

He thinks of himself as an "anthropological photographer".

Jun Cheng worked as a journalist for more than a decade before he quit in 2008 to fully immerse himself in photography.

He started collecting pictures related to cultural relics, and fell in love with fieldwork and anthropology.

This led him to spend a long time exploring the Tibet autonomous region.

Then, he turned his lens toward Africa.