At first, taking pictures was just a hobby of mine to kill time. I started taking selfies, you know, being a girl and everything (laughs). I used to put my camera on top of books and set a timer, and I’d just be goofy and weird to experiment. Then I fell in love with it. Growing up under the Chinese beauty standards, I was not the typical pretty girl. My skin was too tanned and my face was not small enough. To be honest, I did not mind it, I liked the way my skin tone is a bit darker, but the whole environment and other people around me made me upset because they perceived beauty as what the standard is. Especially, there was no role model or inspiration for me to look up to in the media. When I was growing up, and especially when I came to New York, I learned that the most important thing is to embrace my own beauty and think for myself rather than follow the beauty standard.

I am interested in so many things. When I am interested I just cannot help but photograph it. For me, my work showed every part of me, it showed where I come from, how I grew up, what I like and who I am.

I think you almost covered all of them. However, in addition to criticism, it also reflects my own questions towards fashion photography while I was studying my master’s degree, precisely, in fashion photography. I come from a fine art background but part of me is really drawn to fashion; I love fashion styling and how fashion photography is an amazing platform to show my aesthetic and vision. But another part of me is very confused by the media. I am still experimenting how to use this platform and to cope with my fine art approach.

I think the present state of fashion photography is really interesting; film has returned. Imagery becomes more and more personal and relatable. Instagram brought a huge change in terms of how images can be seen. I honestly don't know what the future of fashion photography will be, but I am excited. As a viewer, I think it is important to use this powerful platform in a positive way. I would love to see more real and diverse (size, race and age) people wearing fashionable clothes and appearing in magazines. As a photographer, I would love to make images that say something rather than just showing beautiful people in beautiful clothes, which is also nice. But I want to use fashion as an element to tell a story or show a place, a culture, or a group of people that other people have never seen before or don’t know about.

When I first moved to New York, I was blown away by how different each person is and how they dressed; it is almost like they use clothes to show their personality. In Asia, especially in China and Korea, society is still largely hierarchical, we tend to follow the rules and what others do or wear. Being different or standing out is considered a bad/rebellious thing. Also, moving to New York made me think a lot about my identity, beauty and even lifestyle. Overall, it opened up lots of possibilities in my life. I became braver and more confident, and in a way, it also influenced my work. For me, my work is really influenced by my experience moving from the East to the West. I tend to combine these two cultures together and embrace both of them.

I come from a city called Urumqi, which belongs to the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region located in Northwestern China. The people I photographed are from my homeland. My inspiration behind this series is partly about being away from home. It has been eight years since I left. I still get homesick and, sometimes, I feel a bit lost in a big city. Then, I start missing how blue the sky was there, how simple the people were back in my homeland. Another part is about growing up. I am fascinated by how colourful and vibrant the Uyghur traditional clothing is and how beautiful and majestic nature is there.
It has been my passion to introduce my homeland to others. My hometown is so different from New York City, even from most other cities in China. Fashion, as most people know it, is far from the life in Xinjiang. But people have a great sense of style. I want people to know this place and love it as I do, to feel it as I do. And that’s also what photography means to me, it is to share: a memory, a new place, a person’s story, a lifestyle or even a piece of clothing.

The most remarkable moment is when I was on this road trip with the intention of photographing Kazakh people and their lifestyle in my homeland, but I had no idea who could I meet and what would they look like. I even had no idea which town or village should I come across. I just had a general direction of where I wanted to go, a city called Altay. There, I met this boy when I passed by, something about him was really interesting to me and I wanted to photograph him. So I pulled over and asked him if I could. I ended up staying with him and his family for one and a half days in this beautiful grassland in the Kanas lake area. His mom made me dinner and I drunk camel milk with them. That night, I saw the most beautiful starred sky in my life.

My inspiration is always changing as my photography evolves. Araki is my earliest inspiration. But now I really like Roe Ethridge, Olgac Bozalp and Ruth Ossai.

I really love playing The Sims; I spend so much time in that game, even just to build a house and a character rather than playing it. I am interested in the idea of creating a world and characters. One day, I realised the way I play the game is really like my approach to photography. It provides a virtual space and I could use it to help me manifest ideas without worrying about the limited resources I have in real life. Moreover, the game itself is really interesting and profound. It simulates our everyday lifestyle and the basis of society. And it gives freedom to players, making them designers of their own world in the game. Their way of playing the game reflects their own characters, ideologies, and even subconscious behaviour.

For me, using myself or other people is the same: it is about turning this person or myself into a character. I started photographing myself because it felt natural to me. It is how I became interested in photography in the first place. I always felt an urge to express myself when I was a kid, and as I said previously, I would set a timer and placed my camera on a stack of books and just brought myself into whatever characters I needed myself to be.

I went back to China a couple of months ago and photographed more people in my homeland with the intention of combining fashion to document the rich culture of these people. I am planning to go back again and expand this series.