I’m Bao, I’m from Texas but am currently staying in New York; I love my cat Fred, and I take pictures.

I had this professor when I was in art school, who said before I dropped out, “You’re too young for a style.” So whenever I feel like I’m getting too boxed into one style or one colour palette, I change that. Different colours convey different emotions and moods, and I don’t want to be an artist that only knows how to use one palette or convey one emotion. I got too comfortable, so now I’m moving on.

Sleeping Beauty, but probably only Disney’s animated version of it. I think it’s my favourite animated movie regarding style. I love medieval art, and I studied graphic design in school – Sleeping Beauty is medieval and gothic art blended with a bold, 1950s graphic style. I would love to live in that kind of world forever.

It depends on the mood of the shoot, but I think I do present a lot of my subjects as otherworldly. This is the first time I've really thought about it; I think most of the time it's unintentional. The part of me that sees photography as performative carves out these largely fictional parallel universes in which I place my subjects and triggers my presenting them as otherworldly, although in a (mostly) unintentional matter. Photography for me is more fantasy and less documentary.

Body positivity is important to my work. I’m very open to shooting anyone of any body type/race/gender. I feel like I don’t have much of a say in body positivity though because I’m thin and that movement isn’t for me. What I see now is a plethora of conventionally attractive cis/white/thin photographers hijacking the body-positive movement, which they’ve now become the faces of – I think this is odd. I think photographers with a larger body size should be the ones who are praised for shooting larger or curvy subjects. As for companies moving in the right direction, I think they are starting to, but they still have a long way to go. ‘Curvy’ models, sizes 8-10’s are generally desired and can get work, but what about models who are much bigger? I don’t see that happening…

As someone who uses both she/they pronouns I don’t fully identify as female actually, but as someone who other people assume to be female and as someone who talks about feminist issues a lot, I do think it’s unfair that everything has to be viewed through the lens of a feminist or not. Things can’t just be enjoyed or taken for what they are without expectations if they’re created by a female artist – also similarly when created by a person who is a part of any other marginalised community. 

The direct gaze is somewhat important depending on the project or shoots I’m doing, but other times it’s not important at all. Sometimes, I like to feel like I’m a part of the story I’m telling, like I have a relationship with the subject within the context of the photo. The easiest way for me to do that is to establish a direct gaze. And other times I like to think that I’m just a viewer, and in those cases, a direct gaze isn't as important to me.

I don’t use a particular lens, but I think having a low f-stop lens helps. My lens is really dirty. There’s glitter and dirt, and nose grease stuck in between my multiple filters – I stack a lot of filters on my lenses!

I don’t think I feel particularly nostalgic for my adolescence. I think part of it is that I feel like I never grew up, at least emotionally. Some people look back on their adolescence as a different stage of their life, but to me, it’s all the same. I’m definitely still naive in a lot of ways, and I think it shows in my work a little.

I am super inspired by the idea of performance and theatrics, actually. I believe that photography is a type of performance in itself. Models are basically actors doing a different type of acting for a still camera. Once I started seeing it like that, it changed the entire way I view my process. I refuse to believe that my models, most of whom are my friends, are simply standing in front of a camera to look pretty. I think it’s a performance and it requires skill on both ends.

I don’t know if I see it going anywhere in the future; it’s a slow process because I’m teaching myself from used textbooks. But I’m not doing it with the intention of getting anywhere. I just want to learn. I can’t let my work stay static. If I feel like it isn’t progressing or at the very least changing in some way, I have to take action. I believe that if you want to be a good artist, you let your work change and if it doesn’t, you push yourself to make it happen. So for me, I felt like I’ve been taking still images for nine years now and I’m twenty-two, and I have the rest of my life ahead of me, so I might as well attempt moving image, right?