Drawing closer to human connection

After a divorce and seeking to escape tensions with his parents, Le left Fujian for Hangzhou. However, he soon found he was stuck in a rut.

"Work every day, home every night, a fixed route, no new friends; all of it made me increasingly anxious and even unable to sleep at night," he recalls.

During one sleepless night, he thought about making better use of his spare time with photography, a passion he had in college back in 2012.

"I was a university student and bought a secondhand camera. I started wandering around with it to kill time," he says.

During this phase, he traveled and took pictures, but his early approach was aimless.

"Later, my aesthetic sense developed, and I gradually became dissatisfied with that superficial style of photography. So, I started buying and reading books related to photography."

It drove him to seek structured knowledge and enroll in a professional workshop to study the techniques of traditional darkroom processing and documentary photography.

After graduation, he worked at a local bookstore in Xiamen, where he gained more photography expertise. Those prior photography experiences then led him to post a shooting invitation on Sina Weibo.

To his surprise, private messages trickled in.

"I guess many people like me were very eager to connect," he says.

The most moving story to Le is about the creation of Green Home.

The protagonist of the piece was a young man Le refers to as Hui, a friend he met in the Dali Bai autonomous prefecture, southwestern Yunnan province.

He lived with physical and speech disabilities, Le says, his tone slowing.

In Hui's apartment, Le remembers that he hesitated to press the shutter after the camera was set up and the composition framed.

"I didn't know why," he says.

Unexpectedly, Hui seemed to sense his struggle.

"Perhaps seeing my problem, he immediately pulled open the curtain — the faint light from the corridor poured through the green window onto his wall," Le notes.

"At that moment, I felt all obstacles vanish."

This portrait, co-created with the active participation of its subject, became an eternal memento of their brief intersection.

For about two years, Le has found that Hui's social media updates have ceased, and he has never replied to messages.

Le says he doesn't want to assume the worst outcome, but feels it somehow makes his brief time with Hui all the more cherished.

Gu Zheng, Fudan University professor and an experienced photography theorist, critic and curator, says that Le's "New Comer" series presents the living conditions of young migrants in China.

"The creation of this series is closely connected to this young photographer's active engagement with social media. Through social media platforms, he establishes connections and initiates dialogues with his peers, using portrait photography as his primary medium to reveal the shared sense of identity within this specific group," Gu notes.