Shanghai
"Me and my bud Ivan always go on a biking trip circling the diameters of urban Shanghai when we get to meet up. We took this photo by the east of Huangpu river staring into the metropolitan streets we grew up roaming in. We both were saying goodbye to it in a few hours. Ivan put on Blond by Frank Ocean as we sang along here and there, pushing off the next, inconceivable hour while we grasped onto the present."
"I’ve never been to this coffee shop. I kinda hate coffee.I took this picture on my last biking trip before I left for my spring semester of my sophomore year. I just got hooked up with Family Business by Kanye and I still hear that song when I see this photo. The March and Aprils of Shanghai are some of the best times. I haven’t had a taste of it in years, and there’s only many more to miss. When the pollution doesn’t take over, the weather in Shanghai is really a bliss."
Jerry
"I do not consider myself a photographer. In fact, if photography is considered a medium for expression or a symbolic language amongst artists, photography is then probably my 4th language. However, my love for my city is candid and fervent. For 16 years I’ve called Shanghai my home and it forever will be an inseparable part of my identity. Photography captures my feelings when I am with my city."
"This photo was taken at 3AM on Christmas Eve, at a crossroad of one of the most bustling pedestrian streets in Shanghai. Me, a dude who enjoys hanging out by himself on Christmas Eve while listening to some of the most depressing music ever produced, met this other dude, whose life I have connection with. Why was he there? I don’t know. But he was just so cool for me at the moment, squatting in isolation pondering the destinations of his life. I’d imagine so. It’s probably not the case though, he was on his phone."
"Shanghai, a city composed mostly of atheists and certainly not many Christians, is one of the most festive cities I’ve been to when it comes to celebrating Christmas. As an atheist myself, Christmas is my favorite holiday. Everything feels so wholesome, including the pedestrians, all cosplaying polar bears with their thick thick coats. The thought of cuddling with a random stranger has crossed my mind many times, since they all look so huggable, but I’ve managed to resist that urge. It’s also one of the few times I get to be in Shanghai now that I study in the United States."
"It was a freezing, moist winter night when I was headed back to the neighborhood I grew up in. In attempt to pursue academic success, my parents, both urban-shanghainese for more than thirty years, made the decision to move 15km away from the city center and hope I’d grow up to be an astronaut. After eight tumultuous years of trying to build me into an academic weapon, I was sent abroad, and my parents moved with lightenings speed back to the city center. Yet to me that rural, polluted, dusty part of Shanghai is kinda where I called home. I got super sad and lonesome one night and decided to bike back “home,” and I took this picture on my way back. My parents had to pick me up at midnight on a workday because I couldn’t bike another 15km back home in the city center. That was a few years ago now I love living in the city center hahaha. Ah how people change."