Iris Wu

Working with the medium of photography, I confront time, memory, love and loss in my own personal relationships and pose that photography itself has inseparable relationships with time, memory, and being.

This body of work is divided into three chapters, chronicling my journey from 2019 to 2021.

My first project, in the calm of your arms, began as one of self-exploration by proxy of my intimate relationship with my partner at the time. I intended to explore the dualities present in our relationship: togetherness and tension in private and public spaces, individuality and similarity, and concealment and exposure.

In doing so, I found that the photographs also became a means of expressing my fears and reluctance toward being seen. Growing up in mainland China, I have been unable to broach the subject of sexuality with my conservative family. The narrative I depict in my photographs is one which I have actively kept hidden from them. When including myself as a subject, I often hide my face in shadow or turn completely away from the camera articulating my fear of being seen or found out.

The project concluded when my now ex-partner and I decided to end our relationship. The meanings of the images are changing. After spending time working through these photographs, I have decided to build on the images from in the calm of your arms with new photographs as I continue to explore my identity through new relationships, revisiting scenes from my childhood, and returning to China and my family. In her absence, I went on a journey of searching and reminiscing. I wandered around and captured whatever came to me, which led coincidences, chances, and unexpected events to my images. Photographs from this period oscillate between loss and discovery, meditations on the past while looking uncertainly toward the future.

I am interested in stills in contrast with moving image, multi-image form, and the physical presentation of photographs. I believe that using multiple images to depict one scene functions as a bridge between a single”decisive” photograph and video. It extends a moment and slows down viewers’ process of recognition.

Moreover, I experiment with how the manner in which images exist on pages and walls affects the viewer’s experience. Multiplicity, the pairing of images, the scale of and physical distance between images present new layers. My experimentation with these devices help me to convey my experience with time and memory.