The Light Archive · Archiving the Emotional Life of Photography
Journal
Issue 01
2025 · Eight Voices
In 2025, The Light Archive opened its first call for submissions, focused on photographers based in China. The archive is designed as a long-term, growing collection — with future open calls extending to an international community of image-makers. Participants were invited to share images alongside responses to a structured questionnaire, reflecting on their emotional state at the moment of capture, their experience of returning to the image, and selecting descriptors from a set of affective states spanning positive, contemplative, and negative registers.
The eight works presented here were selected for the clarity and diversity of their affective trajectories. Some feelings deepened. Some transformed entirely. Some resisted language altogether.
01 · 2025
璟玉
Changed
On returning to the image —
"The feeling is different. But my feeling is blurred, like the photographs. I am certain I felt many emotions and a great deal of energy. Yet I cannot quite put it into words."
Using her own myopic lens placed against the camera, 璟玉 discovers that being unable to see clearly is not a defect — it is a different kind of seeing.
02 · 2024
孙梦晨
Deepened
On returning to the image —
"When each friend spoke of their own form, it seemed as though their interpretation was equally valid. It echoes the Diamond Sutra: all that has form is illusory."
Using lumen printing — photographic paper exposed to sunlight beneath petals and translucent matter — 孙梦晨 creates circular images that hold both change and stillness at once.
03 · 2025
高扬
Destabilised
On returning to the image —
"Every time I look back at these photographs, I can still feel the various emotions from the moment of capture. But I cannot keep looking for too long — like staring at a Chinese character until it stops looking like itself."
Three night images made not because of a plan, but because the eyes were fortunate enough to see them.
04 · 2023–2024
楊米軒
Released
On returning to the image —
"I can still retain the feeling from the moment of creation — and looking back produces a sense of release. Or perhaps it is like seeing myself from a third dimension."
A dancer's body is an instrument shaped by ten years of practice. 楊米軒 refuses the smoothing of skin and the softening of edges — preferring the truth of shadow and the honesty of effort made visible.
05 · 2025
小二度
Deepened
On returning to the image —
"When I was shooting, it was the delight and focus of being moved by something beautiful. Now when I look, it is more about a deeper gratitude — the feeling is longer-lasting, and more resonant."
Sunlight through thin curtains. Dried flowers in warm afternoon light. The quality of small goodness, unremarkable and without need of announcement.
06 · 2017
悠喵
Transformed
On returning to the image —
"Looking back at this work spanning nearly eight years, I cannot help but marvel at how wonderful my daughter's childhood was — a time she can never return to."
At the Moeraki boulders on New Zealand's South Island, a small figure climbed a great stone sphere in the golden light of late afternoon. Eight years later, the image is no longer a photograph — it is a door.
07 · 2025
废品回收站
Amplified
On returning to the image —
"The same sense of calm, the enjoyment of stillness — but now I notice the vivid colour arrangement more clearly, and there is an added resonance in my chest."
A laboratory vessel photographed in passing during a busy workday. What began as a small curiosity became a vision of mountains locked beneath ice — alive with contained energy.
08 · 2025
李奕宏
Deepened
On returning to the image —
"When I was shooting, it felt as if I had opened a door inward — and now I walk deeper and deeper inside, further and further from that door."
Just graduated. Alone in a rented room. She picked up the flowers she had salvaged from outside the university gates, cut them in half, and let light fall on them.