My Home
Xiaoran explores her ancestral city of Wenzhou, capturing the tension between urban transformation and cultural preservation.
"My Home" presents Xiaoran's photographic exploration of Wenzhou, documenting the complex interplay between urban transformation and preserved memory in China's pioneering city of private enterprise. Through intimate street photography, her series captures a city existing in multiple temporal layers – where weathered alleyways neighbor modern high-rises, and traditional morning markets persist alongside standardized storefronts.
Although born in Hangzhou and only returning to Wenzhou during Spring Festivals, Xiaoran maintains a complex emotional connection to the city. As an "outsider" who cannot fully comprehend the local dialect, she experiences the city with fresh curiosity while finding comfort in familiar home-cooked meals and close family ties. This liminal position – between distance and intimacy – allows her to observe and document the city through a special lens: combining an outsider's acute perception with deep affection for her ancestral home.
Through her lens, we witness Wenzhou's distinctive urban characteristics: specialized shop cultures, vibrant morning markets, and the coexistence of decay and vitality. From balloon vendors emerging from narrow lanes to elderly residents in quiet alleys, each frame poses the question: What truly constitutes "home"? Is it the place where we grew up, or the city filled with cultural symbols that create a sense of belonging?
Xiaoran's work documents the city's unique spatial and social fabric: triptych-like window frames, morning market culture, private quilts and beddings aired in public spaces, and aging communities left behind by younger generations. These photographs piece together like a puzzle, collectively building her understanding of "home" while exploring how urban spaces shape identity and preserve collective memory, even as the city transforms.
The series presents Wenzhou as a living archive of Chinese urban life, where past and present, tradition and change, continuously negotiate their existence in the same space.
