Never

“I Wish I Had Never Been Born”

This project turns its gaze toward the rapidly growing overdose population within China—made up, heartbreakingly, largely of minors.
When the lens settles on bodies swaying between hallucination and clarity, what emerges is not only youth slipping out of control, but a deeper fracture at the core of existence itself.

Camus once wrote that “there is only one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”
Perhaps what these young people choose is a slower, hesitant form of “living toward death”:
an attempt to flee the crushing freedom of “becoming oneself” by hiding inside the false eternity manufactured by drugs.

Every needle mark the camera records becomes a dismantling of essence and appearance.
Society labels them “fallen,” as if fastening shackles onto existence, yet forgets that beneath their descent lies a search for meaning.
When education, family, and the future dissolve into distant silhouettes, the brief intoxication and numbness become the only graspable form of “real.”

Like the prisoners in Plato’s cave, they fix their eyes on the trembling shadows rather than the blinding sunlight—not out of refusal, but because the light has never been offered to them gently.

Shot through enlargements, scans, and 120 film, the series ultimately points toward a philosophy of seeing.
Once we peel away the label of “addict,” what stands before us are souls wandering an inner desert, searching for water.
Their mistake is not the desire for comfort, but the tragic misrecognition of poison as salvation—
an echo of humanity’s eternal dilemma: our lifelong search for remedies against the void, and our tendency to mistake road signs for destinations.