Most ardently
Where We Dream Wide, and Dwell Small
Where My Gaze Once Rested
The Place That Follows Me
Kyoto: Where the Maples Whisper
VideoAttempt: Life’s Stage
Information
zilinni@arizona.edu
I spent my first three years of college in Shanghai, and only came to the University of Arizona in my senior year. My major back home was never something you’d brag about, but during those three years, I devoted myself to almost every class. That focus, in the midst of a noisy life, felt like a quiet reassurance proof that I have really walked through this place.In June 2024, after the final critique of my photography class, it suddenly hit me: maybe I’ll never take a course like this again, one where I could freely chase light and shadow, and capture whatever stirred in my heart. The excitement faded quickly, replaced by a long, gentle emptiness. So I began to look back. Every little moment, once scattered and ignored, returned like frames washed slowly into being by time.
My major was a Chinese-French joint advertising program. The first two years, I studied on a suburban campus with French, and advertising basics. In the third year, our whole class moved to the main campus downtown, where French professors flew in from across France to teach intensive courses entirely in French. They’d finish an entire semester’s content in two or three weeks. Back then, I often complained: Why learn so much at once? Why juggle language classes, drawing, software, and advertising theory all at once? Why wrestle with cultural differences that made certain assignments so hard to explain?But now, thinking back, all the exhaustion and frustration feels softly gilded by time. It’s only when something is about to slip away that you realize how precious it had been. That’s life, I guess you move from one chapter to the next, saying goodbye to people and things you once lived alongside, whether you’re ready or not.
These photos in the exhibition might seem to lack a single clear theme. They’re simply my class assignments...spring scenes on campus, stray cats, someone reading in library… But because of that photography class, I got the chance to record the places I lived my days in, and now to show them here. Looking at these images brings me back to those years again. Memory never disappears; it only falls asleep deep inside the body. And photography, to me, is just a way to wake it gently and meet it once more.
The Place That Follows Me
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梦与记忆的交叠