Although I am in this world, I feel separate from it, not so much abandoned but more like the world and I coexist as two distinct subjects. I don’t feel a sense of belonging, yet I pretend to be what I think others expect of me, wearing a mask to protect me, not from disease, but from judgment. In her song, A Woman and A Bathroom, Hong Kong-based Cantopop singer Kay Tse sings, “Being alone does not make me desolate but pretending to be happy does”; the words resonate with me and inform my photographs. Self-portraiture and empty, unreal cityscapes situate me within the world. Slow shutter speeds and movement, as well as fictional color palettes, mirror my psychological landscape. Still, I cannot get along well with myself and this world.

American Photographer and curator John Szarkowski questions the function of photography by asking, “Is it a mirror, reflecting a portrait of the artist who made it, or a window, through which one might better know the world?” Both mirrors and windows, my color photographs manifest my feelings and allow the world a window through which to see me process these experiences and a world that alienates me. The city views are colorful and vivid but empty and unreal at the same time. These approaches function as means of communication and self-exploration.