“How did you first get into photography?” my editor Isaiah asked when we met in person in Brooklyn this past September. I was suddenly reminded of a humid summer day in 2022, when my friend Lauren forgot their disposable film camera in my apartment in Durham. Both from China, we had just met through Chinese queer feminist networks in New York and were excited about doing some local organizing in Triangle area North Carolina.
That day, along with two other activist friends, we feasted in my summer apartment with fresh homemade foods: twice-cooked pork 回锅肉, steamed pork with rice flour 粉蒸肉, broccoli stir fried cantonese sausage 西兰花炒腊肠, braised chicken legs 红烧鸡腿 and roasted bone marrow 烤牛骨髓. I didn’t have a proper dining table, so we had to squeeze all the plates and bowls on the wooden tea table in my living room. The political precarity and isolation we felt in the (so-called) U.S. made this gathering especially precious. We took photos of the lovely time and laughter we shared, amazed by dramatic flash of this small plastic camera that Lauren endearingly called “小绿” (little green).
Little Green blended into my dark green couch so well that I only discovered it after my friends had left. As I expressed concerns about how to get it back to her since we were two car-less people living thirty minutes away from each other, Lauren proposed: “How about you just use the rest of the film? It will be like a photo diary exchange and you can give it back to me next time we see each other.” A couple weeks later, Lauren came to see me in Durham again. We used the last two films for selfies, and Lauren brought the film to Southeastern Camera (a local film shop) to develop.
The weeks of anticipation and excitement made receiving the photos feel like opening a time capsule. Looking at the photos now, I can still remember the warm taste of budding friendships.
Little did I know what seemed like a fun accident would turn into a relational practice now inseparable from my art and organizing (and even now, Lauren and I still keep forgetting things at each other’s place every time we hang out). For the past two years, I have photographed Chinese queer feminist spaces in Durham, NYC, Irvine, Baltimore, and across various cities in China. The photos I include in this publication were taken in the fall of 2023. Different from what is usually considered social movement photography, which focuses on the “public”, the hypervisible, and acts of protest that are readily registered as political, I want to document the interior, affective lives of a transnational movement built on intentional relations and kinship. These are photos of sharing living spaces, celebrations, grief, rage, play, joy, and rest. Through my photography process, I hope to uncover what Kevin Quashie calls the “sovereignty of the quiet” — the life sustaining rootwork of Chinese queer feminists who insist on seeing each other through our emotions, bodies, and vulnerabilities.
The Chinese title of the series, 一期一会, is a translation from Japanese concept of いちごいちえ ichi-go ichi-e, meaning “for this time only”. With roots in Japanese tea art, it describes the unrepeatability of life and the uniqueness of each encounter that deserves to be treated with care. What registers the people in my photos as “queer” and/or “feminist” if these photos do not show their “difference”? I refuse to treat the affective and everyday experiences of living a queer feminist life as something immediately accessible from images, nor is it an “essence” I can “capture”. Instead, I treat photography as a conversation, a contact improv, and a mutual offering – intimate encounters through which I get to know my friends just a bit more and invite them to witness our own history in the making.
This series is not intended to fit in representational politics that reinforce identity boxes and borders. Instead, I ground the work through my eyes by handwriting my memories, reflections, and dreams on the prints. Inspired by Polaroids I often give people that accompany them across states and oceans, the handwritings bring my body and voice into the images. Weaving the photos, writing, and translation together, I hope to balance contextualizing for the audience to relate to their own experiences while maintaining privacy, opacity and illegibility that I can’t, and shouldn’t, make readily available.
My political awakening as a transnational organizer has gifted me with the sensibilities of memory work, but it also haunts me with a sense of predictive grief that constantly transports me to a future where the current moment no longer exists. Who will remember us if we don’t witness for our own community? When will be the next time we see each other? Having experienced political repression and instability both in China and in the US, every time I entered a community space, I was readily in a state of memory-rescue fearing that these spaces would disappear. Sometimes I felt guilty that I was constantly reminding people of the grief by taking photos, and I am forever grateful for my community’s willingness to share this active grieving process.
Now, a year has passed since I finished the first iteration of this work. Looking back at the photos, many friends have since moved to other places; relationships have ended or transformed; different waves of organizing have ebbed and flowed. My own practice has also evolved—I am learning how to re-center the love and care that provided soil for my grief, while holding compassion for the parts of me that still feel compelled to excavate and rescue. I had considered adding new photos I have taken since then, but I decided to keep them as they were—as a diary exchange with a past version of myself and the unrepeatable encounters I was fortunate enough to witness.
Editor’s note: Below, you can see the 19 images by clicking next or swiping (on mobile).
1. Dudu嘟嘟 by east river, 2023.9.16, Brooklyn, NYC
Before celebrating our artist collective CAO Collective’s birthday, I took this picture of my dear friend and collaborator Laura/Dudu. As we are haunted by ongoing violence and doxxing, when can we celebrate each other without being tethered to fear? Why is it that even during moments of celebration, we are always shadowed with an inexplicable fear of loss?
在庆祝草生日前，我拍下了嘟嘟这张照片。被暴力haunted的我们，什么时候可以不受恐惧束缚地庆祝我们彼此？为什么好像即使是庆祝的时候，也总笼罩着一种不知道什么时候又会被剥夺的恐惧？
2. A shrine for ourselves, 2023.11.19 Brooklyn, NYC
Yoga and journaling with 嘟嘟 dudu and Morgan, a yoga teacher who guided us back in May in Philadelphia, to ground ourselves at a difficult time.
3. Seedlings (fran’s window), 2023.9.17, Queens, NYC
这个居住的空间承载着很多记忆 / 社群相聚的欢乐，离别的 / 痛苦。/ 看到这株 / 努力生长 / 的苗 / 我们又何尝不像 / 这棵苗一样 / 在破碎的土壤中 / 破土、发芽？/ 生
This living space holds a lot of memories; / The joy of community gathering, the pain / of separation. / Seeing this seedling / growing / how it’s striving to grow / Aren’t we like this seedling? / constantly budding through / a land / that has been broken into pieces / Rebirth.
4. Making an unfamiliar kitchen our home, 2023.10.28 Baltimore, MD
在巴尔的摩的这几天，和朋友们住在一起，一切陌生的恐惧被ta们的温暖填满。一起住、一起做饭、一起做梦。Yiwen提出来，我们可以做一个巴勒斯坦的solidarity dinner，参考网上的一个菜谱。有朋友的地方 就是 家？
These few days in Baltimore, I lived together with friends, and all my fears of the unknown were replaced by their warmth. Together we lived, cooked, and dreamed. Yiwen suggested that we could make a Palestine solidarity dinner based on recipes we found online. Maybe Home is wherever my friends are?
5. Wuyi, where are you? 2023.9.22 Durham, NC, a banner-making gathering for Chinese Queer Feminists
Wuyi is a Chinese feminist forced into disappearance for her activism on the sexually enslaved, chained woman in Fengxian.
6. A make-shift celebration (CAO Collective’s 1st birthday), 2023.9.16 Brooklyn, NYC
这是我们5个人第一次线下都聚在一起。天黑得可早，我们临时找了个公园吃饭，户外又没什么光线。我们灵机一动，把手机电筒打开，放在塑料瓶后，光线透过水折射出来。
This is the first time that all five members of our collective (Chinese Artists and Organizers Collective, a queer feminist art and organizing group) were able to gather together in person. The sun went down pretty early; we looked for a spot in a park to eat, and it was already so dark. So we improvised our own light by turning on a phone’s flashlight, placing it behind a plastic water bottle, and these beautiful rays reflected through the water.
7. Kathy checking on her cantaloupe (we cut and ate it afterwards), 2023.10.13, Lower East Side, NYC
第一次借住Kathy家，一起住的感觉好不一样，对彼此的了解又深了一些。刚跨州搬家的她也还在适应纽约生活。和朋友同吃同住的日子，还想再多留住一些。
为啥冰箱这么空though？
This was my first time staying over at Kathy’s place, and it felt so different living together. We knew so much more about each other, and she was still getting used to life in New York after moving from LA just a while ago. I want to hang onto days when I can live and eat with my friends.
Why is the fridge so empty though?
8. Yidi (my roommate) and Mingkang at my birthday picnic potluck, 2023.10.16, Durham NC
9. A temporary home (staying over at fran’s place before my early morning flight), 2023.10.16, Queens NYC
10. My (then-)partner Wei炜, just waking up, 2023.10.1, Durham NC (Mid-Autumn Festival)
11. Ling walking her baby in the Duke Gardens, 2023.9.28, Durham NC
有时候我觉得生小孩是我做过的最正确的决定。有时候，又会觉得生小孩是我做过最错误的决定。
“Sometimes I feel like giving birth to this child is the best decision I’ve ever made. Sometimes, I think it’s the worst decision.”
12. Jiayi and Qianhui at my birthday picnic, 2023.10.7, Durham NC
13. The one when Jiayi took out her gigantic knife…? (Jiayi’s birthday), 2023.11.10, Durham NC
So many of her polaroids are memories we share together. Adding one more to the album!
14. Interdependence (my roommate’s towel and mine hanging side by side), 2023.9, Durham, NC
15. Yiwen journaling after a long day at feminist studies conference, 2023.10.28, Baltimore, MD
16. Joyce and Jinyi playing in a Chinatown Park, 2023.10.15, Sara D. Roosevelt Park, Lower East Side, NYC
感觉伙伴们每次见面都或多或少有些沉重…这还是我们第一次 放下包袱 敞开来 玩儿！
I feel like every time my friends and I see each other, there is heaviness to some extent. This was our first time taking off these burdens and just playing and fooling around!
17. Rujia calling in Adela for my birthday, 2023.10.7, Durham NC
生日这天把朋友们都聚在一起，又是拍电影，又是拍照片，有时也会想 到底拍这么多的纪录 有什么用？也会觉得有些抱歉，不能全心全意只是享受那个时刻。但翻到这张，我抓拍到Adela从英国与我们同屏… 又觉得纪录是多么让人幸福的一件事
For my birthday, I gathered my friends together, shooting a film and so many photos. Sometimes I wonder: what’s the point of taking so much documentation? Sometimes, I feel a bit sorry that I can’t fully just enjoy the moment we share together. But seeing this photo, where I captured the moment Adela shared with us over screen from the UK … I once again realize what a joyful thing it is, to document all of this.
18. Polaroid Memories, 2023.10.15 Lower East Side, NYC
从20年因行动认识，这还是我们仨第一次线下一起聚，赶在Lili回Baltimore前大吃了一顿。或许社群就是这样一期一会，我总想拍下照片纪念。
Since the three of us met in 2020 through activism, it was our first time hanging out together in person. We ate so much good food before Lili had to head back to Baltimore. Maybe community is about these ichi-go ichi-e gatherings that cannot be replicated, and I always want to document with my photos.
19. 嘟嘟Dudu and Kathy, under the Brooklyn Bridge, 2023.9.16 Brooklyn, NYC
ta们在笑Kathy作为我们之中唯一的一个顺直女总喜欢Queer Baiting
They were laughing at how Kathy, as the only cisgender heterosexual woman in our collective, always likes queer baiting.
