Alison Qin

Artist Statement

As an artist, I explore humanity the most because I think the work about humanity can be easy to understand but open to interpretation. My main devices for the exploration are street photography and self-portrait. My street photography focuses on capturing decisive moments from daily life, such as a person’s expression revealing a subtle change in emotion, or the depth of an emotion. In this case, the decisive moments reflect humanity the most. Also, I think every moment can be the decisive moment but the most important point is how can we take a photo to show the moment to be decisive.

However, In 2020-21 we experienced the Covid 19 pandemic and we had to quarantine. I have nowhere to shoot as a street photographer, so I turned to self- portraiture as a way to continue my investigation of the world that surrounds me. I use self-portrait to investigate humanity as I would include myself in my photos not only as a part of the composition but to communicate what I was feeling within my confinement. I started a home photography project with scenes that were set up by myself. So I turned my entire dorm room into a workspace. The photos are trying to express my feeling of being trapped at home. My furniture and stuff move around every day, and every morning when I wake up I have to think about where I am. My home does not look like a home now. Living and working at home has made me feel trapped and I continually turn my room into a stage set and lose track of the world beyond the scenes I stage. The psychological feeling of being trapped at home is what I try to express through my home photography.