CD3 Project

Guide Book 0.936 (GB) was made in a period when my friends and I, living in Shanghai at that time, were yearning to move to Europe. It includes all 378 photos I took from a 17-day trip revisiting London. The subjects range from random hot men on the street, to quiet acts of care, to coded fashion choices and Grindr conversations.

Repeated images are intentionally left in and interwoven with texts that aren’t captions or commentary, but visual objects themselves—moments of queer attention and inner monologue, appearing deliberately out of sync with the photos, like glances remembered later, or thoughts that arrive before the image does.

Soliloquy examines the boundaries of identity through an introspective engagement with Zou’s personal past and present. The project traces a process of growth and self-preservation, revealing a fragmented self in continual transformation. Rather than presenting identity as a fixed construct, the work dwells in its instability, attending to moments of rupture, return, and quiet becoming.

Attuned to the language and syntax of photography, Zou allows emotion and intuition to guide the process. Embracing spontaneity as both method and affect, the work resists rigid structures of representation and instead invites a reconfiguration of identity beyond containment—opening space for alternate selves and narratives to emerge.

Like a scrapbook that folds generations together, Soliloquy brings archival family photographs (reprinted in the darkroom) into dialogue with images of the present. Through this pairing, the project unfolds a subdued yet persistent tension within familial relationships over time. It challenges East Asian ideals of obligation and expectation, articulating a longing for an individuality shaped not by inheritance alone, but by desire, distance, and refusal.

anonymous memory
2013–2025 Tumblr-sourced imagery
Curated, edited & designed by me

280p
148x148mm
Jan 2026. Limited print

.

Before the internet is fully consumed by algorithmic feeds and AI-generated imagery, this project becomes a more tactile act: archiving, editing, and materialising my Tumblr memory.

It reflects a kind of chronic resistance, a quiet helplessness in the face of the new. Do we really need to produce more images?

In these scattered collections, there is a recurring thread. While editing, I often find myself fixated on a pair of socks, a uniform, a pose. Desire begins to unfold from the screen.

These images shaped my sense of beauty. They influenced my work, even the people I dated.

What you see here is real. The stories behind these archived images happened. They remain anonymous, but you don’t question their truth.