BEIJING—With the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen about to reach its make-or-break finale, now is an ideal time to visit Three Shadows Contemporary Photography Art Centre’s current exhibition, "We Are the World (WATW): Photography from China and the Netherlands," on view through Jan. 28. Co-organized by Three Shadows and Paradox, an art space in Edam, Holland, WATW brings together seven artists from each country working in photography, video, and related media in order to examine economic growth, ecological degradation, and personal alienation — interrelated phenomena that are hallmarks of our current decade. Borrowing its title from the popular 1985 song written to bring attention to the Ethiopian famine, WATW is less bleak than alarming, presenting a variety of artistic responses that can be roughly divided into two camps, with some projects focusing on the sites of urban development and consumer culture, while others attempt to humanize the plebeians who make it all possible.

In the former category is Jin Jiangbo’s series of Inkjet prints, Ah, Shanghai (2009), which documents a city in flux, focusing on the construction taking place as Shanghai prepares for the 2010 World Expo. Reminiscent of Beijing’s manic pre-Olympic facelift, Jin’s images highlight the desire to welcome the world while raising questions about the cost. Documentary filmmaker and photographer Zhao Liang’s contribution to the show, River (2005–08), is a multi-channel video installation of sublime, disturbing beauty, depicting a flow of detritus — dead fish, flower petals, garbage — as it drifts downstream, caught in the reflections of a dazzling sky that play on the water’s surface. (Zhao, whose work is steadily gaining international recognition, also has a solo exhibition of video works opening this week at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.) Frank van der Salm’s C-prints cast a cold, distant eye on the architectural facades and interiors of spaces like factories and business plazas, evoking the work of Andreas Gursky with its formal symmetry and sharp focus. For the most part, there are no figures in these works; instead, they train our eyes on the landscapes that both reflect and shape us.

Song Chao’s "Coal Miners" series (2002–07) is among those projects in the show that illuminate the human side of development and exchange, bringing together portraits of miners working in Shandong Province with images of their families and the landscape itself, helping viewers to understand the economic and emotional realities and environmental consequences linking all three. Jacqueline Hassink’s C-prints and video works depict car shows in different cities around the world, with a particular interest in the use of female models — costumed human props meant to add sex appeal to the shining, lifeless hunks of metal they pose alongside. Hassnick’s work has resonance in China at a time when the country has just surpassed the U.S. in auto sales and the purchase of a new car seems to many an essential rite of passage.

Throughout the gallery, animated black-and-white video projections such as “Desertification This Year (Hectares)” and “Days to the End of Oil,” designed to contextualize the art and underscore its urgency, present simple graphics and ever-changing figures.

Timely and topical, “We Are the World” argues for our shared responsibility in assessing and addressing our patterns of consumption and their ramifications for both the individual and the planet. While decisions are being made Copenhagen, WATW suggests that our personal responses to the current crisis will begin, in part, with acts of the imagination.