As a common 90s born Chinese child from an urban middle-class family, I am an only child. Loneliness and stress were around me during my entire childhood. After I came to the U.S, unfamiliar culture and surroundings made these feelings increasingly serious. This work expresses this loneliness through narrative photographs. According to a survey from Zhejiang University, 83.9% of single-children often feel lonely as they grow up.
I make pictures to express abstract emotions by making them into a concrete figurative frame. I recreate dreams and nightmares, relying on the environment as a blank canvas. I use limited objects to tell a story and explore the emotions of loneliness anxiety. By wearing a white mask, I remove the identity of the character to intentionally represent that these feelings not only happen to me, but are a common problem to single-child families.
In this series, I used a great amount of symbols. For instance, in the photo “Golden Fish”, Golden Fish implies the single-child, water implies the family. Family gives survival conditions to their child, but they also over protect their child, which makes Children feel breathless. Symbols are like clues to lead the audience to solve the puzzles. Such as, red balloons mean childhood, paper planes mean freedom, etc. I interpret my photography more close to symbolism, therefore subjectivity would be a big part of them. But audiences can also have their own interpretations.
