In this series, I explore the fleeting, delicate moments of intimacy, solitude, and quiet wonder that shape our emotional landscapes. I focus on the subtle beauty found in everyday life—the way light softly filters through a curtain, the gentle touch, or the stillness of an object left behind. These images embrace imperfection and ephemerality, revealing the fragile yet profound emotions woven into ordinary existence.



The images do not narrate a linear story but rather form a collection of fleeting impressions—whispers of memory, fragments of a feeling. Silence plays a significant role in this work; it allows space for contemplation, inviting viewers to bring their own emotions and personal experiences into the imagery.



Throughout the series, elements like my ex-boyfriends underwear, flowers on the window edge, and the changing light act as metaphors for transition and impermanence. They mirror the quiet transformations we experience as we navigate love, loss, and self-discovery. The blurred boundaries between presence and absence, past and present, create a meditative space where time slows down, and emotions surface gently, like ripples in still water.



This project is not about grand narratives but rather the intimate, often unnoticed moments that make up the fabric of life. It is an invitation to pause, to feel, and to embrace the quiet poetry that exists in our everyday surroundings.

Qiongkushitai, a Kazakh village in Xinjiang, has for generations lived by the rhythm of herding and the intimacy of the land. Families move their yurt and livestock with season. But in the past decade, the village has been reshaped under the pressures of commercialization, tourism, and political restructuring. As one of China’s smallest ethnic groups, with just 1.5 million people, Kazakh culture faces increasing assimilation and erosion.

Life here was once inseparable from the land: the joy of labor done by hand, the wisdom of coexistence with nature, and local knowledge passed down quietly across generations. To live this way was both a limitation and a gift, bound to the sky above and the earth below. Yet these ways of knowing are fragile in the face of modernization, where machines and formulas reduce everything to standard answers.

Today, traces of Kazakh identity are disappearing from the village. The Kazakh language has almost vanished from public space. Han-run guesthouses rise beside former sheep pens, while local families turn to horse-riding tours to make a living. What was once a lived culture has been repackaged as tourism—reduced to spectacle and tourist experience.

The flow between rural and urban life is no longer only material but also ideological. In a society dominated by Han urban culture, minority traditions survive only when recognized by outside authority. Without written language, culture
 vanishes; without space for belief, memory is silenced. Mosques are demolished or repurposed, while local scripts and songs are no longer known by the youngest generation. What is lost is not only ritual, but the possibility of cultural continuity.

The pastoral is fading—not naturally, but under pressure, displacement, and commodification. What remains are fragments: a song played on the dombra, the taste of milk tea, the rhythm of hooves at dusk. Fragile yet resistant, these gestures whisper another way of being in the world. For the Kazakhs living in the village, the openness of the village makes them admire the modern city and money. Yet whether living in the city or in a hard nomad life, we all exist in an information cocoon, trapped in a single-dimensional perspective. Each has its own difficulties, and perhaps when it comes to the continuation of minority cultures, we can find better ways.

Christianity adopted eggs as a symbol of fertility, resurrection, and eternal life. From the outside, eggs appear stone cold, yet inside they nurture young life.
    

Semper Femina is a photography book that reimagines archetypal female figures from mythology and fairy tales through a contemporary feminist lens. The Latin phrase “semper femina,” meaning “always a woman,” encapsulates the core of this project: an exploration of the evolving, complex, and often misrepresented nature of womanhood. Drawing inspiration from the poetic narratives of ancient stories and the emotional truth of personal experience, the book interrogates the roles women have historically been assigned, and how these roles have shaped—often constrained—our understanding of femininity.

The title Semper Femina pays homage not only to the women in these stories, but also to those who have consumed, internalized, and grown up with such narratives. Borrowed from Laura Marling’s 2017 album, the phrase embodies both a celebration and a questioning of what it means to be female. This duality—softness and power, beauty and rage—informs the emotional tone of the work. My visual language is further shaped by the influence of Jo Ann Callis and Cindy Sherman, whose staged, symbolic photography challenged dominant depictions of femininity. Callis’s use of color, texture, and domestic tension, along with Sherman’s exploration of constructed identity, inspired me to create deliberately artificial yet emotionally resonant scenes. Through this photographic book, I attempt to reclaim and reimagine female archetypes from myth and fairytale, using staging and metaphor to express the inner complexities and contradictions of womanhood from a contemporary feminist perspective.

The photography combines portraiture, still life, landscape, and symbolic mise-en-scène to construct a dreamlike narrative space. Lighting, costume, and gesture are carefully choreographed to reflect emotional states and psychological transformation. We also integrated poetic texts—by feminist poets such as Patricia Smith, Suniti Namjoshi, and Anne Kwok— into the layout, allowing visual and literary storytelling to intertwine. Original illustrations and thoughtful page design add a fairytale quality, blurring the line between childhood imagination and adult reinterpretation.

This project is deeply personal. It grew out of conversations between women, and a desire to reclaim the stories we have inherited. It critiques the way traditional narratives often reduce women to objects of desire, figures of fear, or symbols of virtue. At the same time, it offers an alternative: a space for ambiguity, agency, and emotional honesty. Through this book, I hope to invite viewers—especially young women—to reflect on how stories shape their identities, and to consider the power of rewriting those stories on their own terms.

Test: The Damsel

Test:  Medusa

This project draws inspiration from my personal experiences with the societal expectations placed on women. These experiences often left me feeling lost, overwhelmed, and alienated— especially during moments of personal growth and transition from a girl to a woman. Later, I discovered online forums on Reddit and began discussing these feelings with my female friends. I realized that many women share the same struggles, confusion, and anger. These conversations became the foundation for my exploration of my identity as a woman and my engagement with feminist theories.

Fairytales and romantic comedies have long portrayed women as passive figures, objects of pursuit rather than active participants. This narrative conditions women to become passive observers in their own lives, waiting to be loved and validated. Books like Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls highlight how societal expectations for girls to be “nice” suppress their ability to express anger or assertiveness. Girls are often taught to avoid conflict, to make everyone happy, and to maintain superficial harmony—lessons that deeply resonate with my own experience as an Asian woman. In many Asian families, women are expected to defer to men and repress their negative emotions, further compounding the “good girl” ideal.

Visual media, from pornography to film, amplifies this conditioning. Directors often use distinct camera techniques for men and women, shaping women as objects of desire. Literature, too, frequently idealizes women, reducing them to incomplete figures of allure. In Leonard Cohen’s song Alexandra Leaving, for instance, Alexandra exists only as an absence, a vessel for longing, with no mention of her inner life. She is a figure of desire, not a whole person. Through lighting, I emphasized side and backlit effects to create a surreal, dreamlike atmosphere within ordinary interiors. These choices amplify the tension between conformity and defiance, reflecting my own journey as a woman recognizing and breaking free from societal constraints.

This project seeks to expose these seemingly normal yet deeply oppressive societal expectations through a female lens. I aim to help young women recognize these constraints or at least feel seen and understood. This project has helped me understand my role as a photographer: carving out a space of freedom for my generation of women. It is a visual expression of my growth—how I became aware of these structures and how I began to dismantle them.

Initially, I experimented with still life photography but found it lacked the narrative depth I wanted to convey. Inspired by Laurie Simmons, I developed a staged documentary series using symbolic objects to hint at the emotional and psychological states of women. In these images, women appear to be performing mundane activities in domestic spaces—kitchens, living rooms, and bathrooms—which are traditionally associated with the “good girl” ideal. To challenge this narrative, I styled the women as doll-like figures with expressions that simultaneously convey compliance and rebellion. They appear to participate in these daily rituals, but their gazes are detached, questioning, and, at times, confrontational.

This project is about a road trip with five adventurous girls I’d never met before. Together, we piled into an old Jetta and set off to explore the borderlands of Yunan Province, China.

We stuck to national highways and winding rural roads, stopping in small-town motels to rest. Along the way, we faced all kinds of challenges—some funny, some tough—but we always had each other’s backs. What started as a trip with strangers turned into a story about friendship, trust, and the kind of freedom you only find on the road.

It’s a celebration of connection, adventure, and the wild beauty of not knowing what’s around the next bend.