Zheng’s I Am Simply Me explores identification, intimacy, and the difficulties marginalized people face. It’s extra than simply pictures when she portrays individuals who have skilled discrimination based mostly on their sexual orientation or gender identification. Her portraits are home windows into experiences which might be usually marked by intolerance and hardship. The collection stems from Zheng’s personal wrestle as a bisexual girl rising up in conventional East Asian households.
In Zheng’s personal phrases, her topics have allowed her entry to their most weak selves, permitting her to inform their tales by her lens. The power of I Am Simply Me lies in Zheng’s capacity to rework her private bond with these tales into an common language of empathy and connection.
It’s maybe Zheng’s skillful use of sunshine and shadow that creates delicate shifts in temper that replicate the inside emotional states of every topic that makes every portrait stand out. As she traverses the journey from confusion and isolation to self-acceptance, her visible language speaks to the tales of others in addition to to her personal. As a photographer, she captures the fragile means of forming your identification in a world full of strict cultural norms, particularly in cultures the place custom trumps individuality.
Having grown up in Chengdu, China, the place same-sex attraction was a taboo and actively discouraged, Zheng skilled an inside battle that resonates all through her work. There appears to be a stress between visibility and invisibility, between power and fragility in her topics. As a consequence, Zheng engages not solely in a dialogue about sexual identification, but in addition about our common need to be seen, understood, and accepted.
The way in which Zheng captures her topics’ vulnerability whereas sustaining a robust inventive imaginative and prescient demonstrates her photographic prowess. Her portraits really feel like intimate exchanges between her and her topics, and viewers get to see them up shut. That’s why Zheng builds belief together with her topics, which is vital to her portraits being genuine and real.
Zheng’s Portrait #7 picture from the I Am Simply Me collection has garnered extensive acclaim, incomes her the LensCulture Critics’ Alternative Award. The {photograph} shouldn’t be solely technically spectacular however emotional as effectively. This explicit picture carries an nearly mysterious feeling, heightened by the curling smoke surrounding the topic’s face, whereas a lot of the collection exudes heat and tenderness. The smoke introduces a way of ambiguity and stress, setting it aside from the opposite portraits. This distinction prompts viewers to look deeper, to query the complexity of the topic’s inside world.
The work of Zheng goes past merely highlighting marginalized teams’ struggles. By creating an area for these people, she actively offers them visibility and dignity. She offers them the possibility to inform their tales, ensuring their strengths and resilience are acknowledged. By doing so, Zheng elevates their voices, making them really feel like people with distinctive, worthwhile experiences, not simply “others” in society.
