Drawing closer to human connection

In a quiet corner of a Shanghai library, photographer Le Ziyi has placed pictures of young people taken by his lens at a distance where one must step closer to see them clearly.

More than 20 portraits, deliberately scaled down and suspended on wide, white-matted cards, resemble cautious glimpses into the urban sea of faces.

"I wanted everyone to come a little closer to look at this exhibition," says the photographer in his 30s from eastern Fujian province.

Unlike his previous presentations at major exhibitions, such as the Jimei X Arles International Photo Festival in Xiamen city of Fujian, where large-format prints on aluminum composite panels were the norm, this show held in a cramped library space became a more powerful narrative strategy.

"It's like when you walk through the city every day, you see so many strangers passing by," he explains.

"But you have no idea what's behind them, what experiences they've actually been through."

So, he brings the viewer nearer. Here, one can see a young woman curled up on a bed in a rented room, scrolling through her phone illuminated only by a desk lamp. In another photo, a Chinese woman who grew up in Italy sits in a pavilion by West Lake in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. The bustling crowd around her contrasts sharply with the alienation written on her familiar features.

Le has developed a "connection "with each one of those strangers through his photographic work. He still remembers the encounter with his first subject, a young woman playing with her phone on the bed.

She was under 20 and was a webcaster whose savings had been wiped out by an online scam. After being scolded by her family, she fled alone to Hangzhou, temporarily staying in a shared apartment with a male netizen she had never met before.

Le recalls he met her at a subway station. "It was very awkward at first. I carried my camera, and for about half an hour, we were both very unnatural."

The turning point came when he set aside his role as a photographer and chose to share his own story first, intending to break the ice.

"As we spent the day together, wandering the city, eating together, and listening to each other's stories and experiences, she gradually let down her guard," Le recalls.

It wasn't until 9 pm that she took him to her "home".

"The guy was sleeping on a floor mat. As soon as she got back, she lay on the bed playing with her phone under the desk lamp. That scene resonated with me deeply — it was as if they didn't live together, yet, this was happening in the real world."

Under his lens, the individuals suspended in the torrent of the times, and their confusion, struggles, courage and small victories are all documented.

These images together form a vast mirror, allowing Le not only to see himself clearly, but also to draw solace and strength to move forward, he says.

This photography project, named "New Comer", began in 2020 out of Le's urge to escape his life.

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.

In a sense, these relaxed and natural portraits of young people can also be seen as self-portraits that Le creates of his own "otherness", he says.

"Of course, the casual postures and uncertain expressions displayed by these newcomers may not represent their permanent state. Perhaps they are merely pausing temporarily, using this moment of stillness to recalibrate their life's direction," he adds.

Le admits that his yearning for connection may be rooted in his own experience of "flow".

As a child, with his parents separated, he was forced to adapt to new environments from a young age.

Another more enduring "battle "that directly tempered the edge of his worldview came from the conflict with his father, a doctor, over his career choice.

"My father always thought that photography was a dead end, that I might end up begging on the streets," Le says.

Five years of shooting have given the "New Comer" project the weight of time.

He has witnessed the flow of life: the first young woman he photographed told him that she now has a good job in Shanghai, is about to get a promotion, and has tried interacting with her family again, finding it "not so terrible after all".

"For people, given enough time, space and freedom, the capacity for self-healing is very strong," Le remarks.

In 2023, while living in the Philippines learning English, he received an email announcing he had won the Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award.

"I immediately rushed into the street, screaming with joy at the top of my lungs," he says.

The honor brought more opportunities and subtly improved his relationship with his father, too.

When asked what he ultimately hopes this vast archive will become, he says he has never had any great ambitions.

"If someone, being part of this group, can find a little solace in seeing this work, I think that's enough."

If possible, he wants to continue "New Comer" until 2030.