The Journey

On April 20, my father received a call from one of his best friends. He was severely affected by the pandemic’s effect on the economy. Without a beat, my dad offered to drive over and help out. 

We started from Denmark, Maine, and drove for four days and three nights before we got to Bethel Island, California. After stopping for 2 weeks, we went down south of California and were back home within a week. A total of nearly 7000 miles on the road. 

We tried our best to minimize contact while experiencing the states. We wore gloves and masks at every gas station. Only ordered take out. And slept in the truck. 

The Book

• 10×8 Softcover Photo Book
• Premium Matte Paper
• 56 pages

There are no page numbers, but the photos are placed in chronological order and you’ll know the state where each photo was taken by looking at the bottom corner. So you won’t say “check out page 17”. Instead, you’ll say “check out page Ohio”！

“Isolated on the Road” has a white/blue color scheme. The White pages will include my main work documenting the scenery along the road and will tend to preserve artistic elements. The Blue pages will contain multiple photos (like a mini-series) and be purely documentary. Two of the three Blue pages will be directly related to the Covid-19 crisis.

Many photos also have my own personal comments next to them. It might be about the shooting conditions, a story about the day I took the shot, a fun fact about the location, etc.

The Photographer

I was born in San Jose, California but grew up in China. At age 7, partly due to the 2008 financial crisis, my family moved near my mother’s family house in Taichung, Taiwan. A year later, I moved to Dongguan, China where I finished elementary school. There I started to pick up on the arts. I participated in plays, studied drawing, and occasionally danced. 

My junior high years were spent at a public school in Guangzhou, China. At grade 8, the school hosted its first school-wide photography contest. For the next three months, I went everywhere with my father’s camera. I had no prior photography experience, so I just tried every angle and every setting possible when finding a nice scene. It was a time of intense creativity for me.  I won. Although there were maybe not even ten other contesters, I felt immensely proud. The school announced my accomplishment to the whole school and hung the photos all over the campus.

Since then, I’ve become extremely obsessed with photography. It’s been an extremely effective tool for expressing myself. For years, I’ve been wanting to make my own photobook. The tools have always been there, but I’ve never felt confident enough in my own skills, nor do I want to make a photobook for making a photobook’s sake. Obviously, however, that is no longer the case. 

After graduating from high school, I decided to take a gap year. I went to Paris for a photography internship. It was my first time working with professional photographers and I learned a lot. During my Paris trip, I vowed to photograph one stranger a day. And so every day after work, I would stroll around Paris and ask strangers if I could take their photos. The photo series had the potential to become a photobook itself, but I left it as a personal challenge.