© 2025 by Zixuan Mai

Where Light Breaks In(2025)
This series is a practice on light. In nature, light generates growth and rhythm; in photography, it becomes both medium and subject. Through double exposure and light leaks, these photographs seek to dissolve linear time and fixed boundaries, creating layered visual fields rather than singular moments. Captured in spring, the flora act as nature’s skin, sensing light and wind, absorbing time’s warmth, and leaving subtle traces. In the darkroom, light was manipulated to evoke impressions rather than depict exact scenes. Photographic paper became another kind of skin, tactile and responsive. Photography, in this work, becomes a resonance, an embodied exchange between human and natural sensibilities.
All photographs in this series are darkroom prints on 8×10 photographic paper.
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