2018, Archival Print, 36″x48″
This photographic series is a love letter to the land we live and grow on. It is an intimate portrait exploring the ground cover and earth in urban parks.
Living in the city, public parks are where I go to renew my missing connection to nature. Looking down at the soil and roots feels meditative and therapeutic. In Chinese, there is a term “接地气”（jie di qi）, which literally means “connecting with the essence of earth”. In my photographs, I capture quiet, fleeting, and chaotic layers of leaves, fruits, seeds, and twigs. It’s the soil that one walks upon without seeing it. The images are presented larger than life as memorials to these humble slices of earth. Solely created by the forces of nature: gravity, wind, and rain, the fallen foliage, flowers, and fruits turn the land into an ephemeral canvas. I see a world of excitement, drama, joy and an overwhelming sense of beauty.
As I move from tree to tree, the topology of the ground shifts in tonality, structure, density, and luminance. There are traces of activity, a piece of discarded plastic, a nibble acorn from a squirrel, or a leaf blown from across the field. With the “grammar” of the earth exposed, the images become a snapshot of nature’s processes.