4x5 Film
Memory is subjective, and the artist’s recollections of the city appear blurred—like afterimages left behind by time. This series explores how cities retain traces of lived experience even as they continuously change and evolve. Working with a 4×5 pinhole camera—without a lens and without focus—the artist allows light to slowly pass through a tiny aperture, letting time accumulate on the film rather than freezing a single moment. The hustle and bustle in the background disappears. The resulting images are not direct representations of reality, but impressions of time lingering within space. Their blur and softness echo the nature of memory itself: partial, shifting, yet deeply felt. 

Many of the photographed sites were once places the artist moved through quickly, regarded merely as work locations. Unnoticed at the time, these streets and corners quietly shaped an understanding of the city as a lived environment. Returning years later, they emerge as integral fragments of a personal narrative. Through extended exposures of light and shadow, transient crowds dissolve, leaving behind a tender imprint—an enduring presence suspended within the urban frame. These photographs invite viewers to slow down, to observe what remains, and to reflect on how places silently record the lives that pass through them. While rooted in locations such as Dihua Street, Bopiliao, and Taipei’s Western District, the series ultimately reflects a formative moment in the artist’s practice—when photography became a means through which the city itself transformed into a mirror of memory.