@liamchong in his studio March 2026
Printed at @318_art_lab
This ongoing series is a love letter to my friends, my family away from home and a support system formed over the years of living in this city that can swallow you without it.
@harrietbeidleman on my birthday in Tenerife a few weeks ago.
Continuing this series challenges a persistent difficulty of seeing beyond the identities we build and present. I try to look toward an unguarded presence that exists before, or outside of, the roles we inhabit.
Printed at @318_art_lab on @cut_by_papercut
These portraits of @en_pe draw from two visual inspirations: my family archive and early modernist photography. I wanted to photograph her in a way that echoes the dusty images of my young grandpa that I have studied countless times, photographs worn by time, yet carrying a quiet dignity and permanence. The process became a rediscovery of how expressive simplicity can be.
@parisrosina sits in her bathtub, as she did a few weeks ago when I visited to film her for my video project. Each time I cross the threshold of that colourful townhouse, alive with brilliant women, I feel something in me exhale. The house is a living archive of affection. I’m always finding new, tender details: Paris’s kitchenware that feels like a family of its own, the art on the walls, the dogs she’s caring for, the music drifting from the sound system that threads through every room like a secret pulse.
The first photograph was taken shortly after waking, when the temporary ease of being away from daily routines allowed a sense of closeness to surface. I chose not to photograph him as he slept, an intentional act of restraint. I knew that by the time the film was developed, he might no longer be present. Later, I learned that he had been photographing me in similar moments, sleeping, unaware. His images functioned as premeditated keepsakes, reversing the roles of observer and observed.
The second photograph shows me seated at the dinner table. His request: “Come on, let me take one of you” introduces a shift in agency. Together, these images question authorship, consent, and the subtle negotiations that occur when intimacy and image-making intersect.
“More than friends, less than lovers” is a personal project that seeks to uncover how my generation experiences love. As the first to grow up with dating apps and the commodification of romance, we navigate a landscape where love has been made instantly accessible, swiped, matched and consumed. Has this accessibility changed the essence of love itself? Can we still experience love as profound, transformative, and rare when the abundance of options risks making it feel disposable?
These photographs were taken from the passenger seat, a place of both movement and surrender. Each image belongs to a different journey, a fleeting chapter. The holidays offered a stage for illusion: sunlit days where ease and unfamiliar landscapes made intimacy feel profound, even fated. Within that suspended time, I would drift into daydreams of shared futures, mistaking the softness of escape for the solidity of connection.
Away from the routines of reality, it was effortless to inhabit the performance of togetherness. By the time I developed the film, the men were already gone, leaving only these frames as quiet evidence of transient affection, of narratives that existed briefly between departure and return.
“More than friends, less than lovers” is a personal project that seeks to uncover how my generation experiences love. As the first to grow up with dating apps and the commodification of romance, we navigate a landscape where love has been made instantly accessible, swiped, matched and consumed. Has this accessibility changed the essence of love itself? Can we still experience love as profound, transformative, and rare when the abundance of options risks making it feel disposable?
“More than friends, less than lovers” is a personal project that seeks to uncover how my generation experiences love. As the first to grow up with dating apps and the commodification of romance, we navigate a landscape where love has been made instantly accessible, swiped, matched and consumed. Has this accessibility changed the essence of love itself? Can we still experience love as profound, transformative, and rare when the abundance of options risks making it feel disposable?
This self-portrait was made in midsummer, marking the first time in ten years that I turned the lens inward. Through my body language, I sought to translate the shifting emotions that move through me. By recording both the highs and lows tied to romantic longing, this work becomes a personal archive, an attempt to trace the evolving terrain of desire and connection that shapes our lives.
#selfportrait #mediumformat #kodakportra400 #analoguephotography
“More than friends, less than lovers” is a personal project that seeks to uncover how my generation experiences love. As the first to grow up with dating apps and the commodification of romance, we navigate a landscape where love has been made instantly accessible, swiped, matched and consumed. Has this accessibility changed the essence of love itself? Can we still experience love as profound, transformative, and rare when the abundance of options risks making it feel disposable?
This sculpture was made as a representation of a feeling of disappointment and deceit, a heartbreak without a true love at its core. It mourns a feeling that never fully arrives, a connection that dissolves into transactions before it has the chance to become something real.
#stilllife #645 #kodakportra #mediumformat #artproject #sculpture
