Louis de Bernières wrote in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, “Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being ‘in love’, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.”

In terms of romantic love, the understanding varies among individuals. However, these understandings do share some similarity – that love brings motivation for one to continue pursuing some goals and enjoy the process of doing so. I would describe that love is the moment someone can disconnect the infatuation to the endless curiosity of one person or one thing - and I think to put it in better explanation, love is to be so passionate and faithful about one thing and become so completely absorbed into understanding it, feeling it, and becoming part of it – and allowing it become part of me. But any explanation of love would not be sufficient, like many other things – the true communication between two individuals are not through the language or gestures, but the underlying experiences and, if I may, the love between the two. 

In terms of other forms, sometimes love is charity. It is quite true under certain light – giving orphans homes, making children meals, giving shelter to the homeless, or, even much less, making sweater to someone you find infatuated with. To me, however, charity isn’t what brings me the motivation to continue my journey. I do enjoy giving without asking for return. I do it when I can, although there isn’t much I could help. It is also true that peace comes from within. I am not sure if this would sound so mundane, but my struggle comes from the peace I found and the ambitious of me to fulfill other’s expectations. To me, making my parents happy, creating opportunities to exhibit my thoughts in forms of writing, illustration, design or some other sorts bring me joy and fulfillment. This is the essential struggle – that the fulfillment against peace, shelter against nature, and love against freedom.

When in love, it’s easy to believe someone or something is perfect, and allow your fate to be determined by little thinking. Everyone does it. I do it less, and try to do it lesser. I think love against being in love – more or less because being in love is a part of the freedom the world has to offer, and it takes courage and disciplines to move forward the obsession. It take true faith in loving the world to continue such struggle and living. At the end of the day, I feel the great joy that beyond any rewards can compare. Such feeling cannot be translate into human language, but it is much of love and faith, a dance to understand, sympathize, and reunited with soul.

Indeed. I love Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal, especially the quote from Femmes Damnées (À la pâle clarté) - De ses yeux amortis les paresseuses larmes, L’air brisé, la stupeur, la morne volupté, Ses bras vaincus, jetés comme de vaines armes, Tout servait, tout parait sa fragile beauté.

I don’t typically like to work with well-known models. In those cases, the definition of the photographs shift from its own value to the value of the people who is being photographed. I like to work with untagged beauty. That being said, I feel there are a number of well-known models I would love to photograph regardless how famous they are. Tamara Weijenberg, Gemma Ward, and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley would be the first three names I could think of. Of course there are some other models I found beautiful in photographs but I haven’t met them in person, so I couldn’t tell.

Photography requires a great amount of improvisation. There are methods that I learned and use, especially in my more recent works, that help me to use more preparation than improvisation during my photoshoot. I will create Google doc and let my stylist, makeup artist, hair stylist and sometimes the model come and all put down ideas as the seed for our brain storming sessions. We then forge, going back and fore, and sometimes come up with something completely different, etc. It could be a long process that requires everyone to devote time to, but it could be something quite rewarding at the end of the day. Even in that case, improvising is important, there will always be more or less some difference between what we prepared and what we created. Other times, I would let the random elements flow and allow my intuition determines what to shoot, or whether I would shoot at all. Especially when I travel, models would just show up in my hotel. That’s hardly doing photoshoot in my opinion, the action of experiencing unknown and bohemian sexual rapture. The photographs are documentary, but not journalistic, in forms that are liberating from its romantic literacy. The art is not photographic, but atavistic. Such enviable connections between the muses and lovers of mine were not in anyways normal or widely accepted in the photography community, but that is probably what make these photos mesmerizing.