New York-based Chinese photographer Lu Guang has been detained incommunicado in China’s western Xinjiang province since early November 2018. Though his arrest was confirmed by Chinese authorities weeks later, details of the charges against him as well as his current whereabouts remain unknown.

Internationally renowned for his raw but carefully constructed photo essays of rural and industrial China—and its effects on migration and social life—Lu had travelled to Xinjiang last October at the invitation of a friend. He had never visited the region, and according to his wife, Xu Xiaoli, planned to tour the area and run an informal photography workshop in Urumqi, the region’s capital.

Xinjiang is home to a sizable minority of Uighur Muslims and is the site of intense repression by Chinese state security, which detains thousands of Uighurs in political reeducation camps designed to indoctrinate them with Communist Party values. Xu maintains that she was not aware of Lu having any plans to attempt to photograph these camps while in Xinjiang.

Lu’s disappearance became apparent to friends and family in November when he never arrived in Sichuan province—which he regularly visits to do charity work—as he had planned to do around November 4th or 5th. Xu attempted multiple times to contact authorities in both Xinjiang and Lu’s home province of Zhejiang, to no avail.

Finally, in early December, authorities contacted Lu’s family in China to notify them that he had been arrested in the city of Kashgar, which has been at the center of government crackdowns against Uighur communities. Still, no written notification about Lu’s detention has been issued and there has been no indication of the reason for his arrest or the charges against him. Xu has been able to confirm that the friend Lu was visiting in Xinjiang was detained as well.

Lu’s family quickly enlisted a team of lawyers to begin working on his case, though as of her most recent public update on December 11th, they had been unable to meet with Lu and had still yet to receive any written documents from the relevant authorities. Having committed no apparent crime, Lu must be released immediately and allowed to return to the United States.