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Grace YuXuan Gao

I am a photographer with a multicultural background, and my perspective is shaped by moving between different cities, cultures, and visual environments. This constant shifting informs the way I observe the world: quietly, curiously, and with a sensitivity to the small, candid moments that reveal how people relate to their surroundings.
My creative practice centers on documenting everyday life through a subconscious lens—capturing gestures, textures, and fleeting scenes that often go unnoticed. I experiment with a different cameras, many of which I find in second-hand markets. Reviving these older tools allows me to explore different visual languages, embrace imperfections, and give new life to objects that might otherwise be discarded. This approach reflects my commitment to sustainability as well as my belief that each camera carries its own history and narrative.
Through my photos, I reconnect our personal experience with urban observation, creating images that invite viewers to slow down, look closer, and discover softness within the structure of the modern world.

 
 

Project Statement

This project started when I moved away from home to a different part of the world and has been continued as I travel. I explore the tension and harmony between lived experience and urban architecture. In cities shaped by concrete, metal, and angularity, I search for traces of softness, moments human presence reshapes the rigidity of built environments. Through photography, I examine how people move, exist, and feel within these structures, and how the urban landscape mirrors our internal states.
I am drawn to candid, often overlooked moments: a reflection on a glass façade, a light cutting through a geometric street, or a glance that interrupts the architecture’s uniformity. These scenes become a dialogue between the landscape and the self. They reveal how we are constantly connecting with the weight of structures around us with our own subtle forms of softness, vulnerability, and affects.
My images are both observational and introspective, which are part documentary, part self-conscious. As I explore my subconscious awareness of space and movement, I click the shutter without actively thinking about the result. Ultimately, my practice is an attempt to find tenderness within architectural density, and to invite viewers to reconsider the emotional dimensions of the cities they inhabit.

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