The work is a record of two years of shooting, and the sense of time brought to me by the time negatives has co-constructed this journey as if it were a time warp. The project consists of photographic images, an exhibition installation, and two different kinds of photo books.

In the summer of 2021, I stumbled upon dozens of love letters exchanged between two individuals residing in Hunan, China, during the 1990s. These letters beautifully capture the mundane aspects of daily life that characterized the intimate relationship between the lovers.
After reading these letters, I decided to use them as a template to recreate and experience the depicted life through their perspective. Using them as inspiration, I embarked on a photography journey, capturing a new set of images reflecting similar cities and paths of activities but set in different historical contexts.
In an attempt to recreate the stories conveyed in these letters, my photographs engage in a visual dialogue with the words penned decades ago. The amalgamation of these vintage love letters and my contemporary images culminates in a new love album. Like the words in letters, photographs encapsulate the fleeting moments of life. From trivial daily records to the emotional states between lovers, the letters are filled with emotions and routines, as if everything is reproduced within myself in a different time and space. This album serves as a form of time travel, seamlessly interweaving diverse individuals and moments across time through the combination of words and images.

Words and images are both records; 1996 and 2023 may not be so far apart. Stagnation or flow—it is all a shuttle, or rather, time is inherently intertwined with infinite imagination.

The photography book has a self-published version from 2023 and a reprinted self-published version from 2025. The two books differ slightly in design, image selection, and editing.

Photos come from program mistake in my print machine.

The photographs capture moments from my daily life and the surrounding world. Memory acts as a bridge across time and narration. Different moments seem to occur at the same place, fueling my fascination with multiple exposures.
Revisiting past images reconstructs memories, intertwining past, present, and future. As salt silver films develop. Into clearer images, the once ambiguous boundaries of the images become definite, mirroring the image-making process—evolving from nebulous to concrete.

The project focuses on the exploration of intimacy in the family, using traditional technical camera work alongside collage and the interweaving of old images in the production of the book and the presentation of the exhibition.The project consists of photographic images, exhibition installation, and two different kinds of photobook.

By reorganizing my grandmother’s handmade family album, I create new memories of family members that feel both intimate and distant. This collection of photographs spans from the 1960s to the 1980s, capturing the family’s struggles. The reconstruction transforms familiarity into something unfamiliar. Through the process of photographing, I establish new connections with family members and the places they inhabited. While taking pictures becomes a daily ritual, it simultaneously distances the images from the realism of life. The absence of distinct symbols results in ambiguous identities for each figure in the photos, making the album potentially representative of any Chinese family. A Chinese model family begins to emerge through the visual narrative of the photographs.

We talk so much about "love" or "I love you," but I often wonder, if love is worth a thousand words, why do we still need words, letters, or even language at all?


This project originates from my previous work, where I favored traditional photograph- ic techniques and explored different expressions in utilizing archives. I have chosen this project as the research direction and goal for the next stage, continuing from my pre- vious body of work. From historical letters, I sought common ground, finding myself moved by their words, which then inspired my own photography and creative process. 
Letters and images, both serve as languages for re-presenting scenes. Though they may seem similar, they complement each other. A still image is often too clear, almost to the point of leaving no room for imagination, yet it remains powerful enough to serve as evidence. On the other hand, words are grounded in context and imagination, and it is precisely this imaginative aspect that allows us to feel deeply when reading words written centuries ago. 

Memory itself is fragile, and what people are most willing to believe is often simply the version of memory that resides in imagination. Perhaps this is why I am drawn to using these two mediums—both capable of fictionalizing—to create new narratives. I have a particular fondness for film photography, and the process of reading a letter feels much like the act of photographing with a film camera. After taking the photograph, I would spend long hours in the darkroom, repeatedly examining the negatives I had shot. When the photo is finally printed, weeks or even months after the moment it was taken, the image seems to have undergone a shift in time, creating a sense of temporal disorientation. The experience of reading letters is similarly timeless. I find myself drifting beyond the confines of real-time, seeking a shared emotional expression. In my past works, I often embraced the accidental and erroneous images that emerged during the developing or printing process, using them as an unanticipated complement to the imagination. 

In today’s world, the fine-tuned precision of images no longer holds the power to convince. Perhaps the errors themselves are traces of something deeper—imperfec- tions that are part of the story. We talk so much about "love" or "I love you," but I often wonder, if love is worth a thousand words, why do we still need words, letters, or even language at all? Could it be that the essence of love, like memory, transcends the boundaries of expression, slipping through the gaps between what we see and what we feel? These uncertainties and imperfections in both letters and images are where the true meaning often resides.