Between Shore and Sky
Brandon Lu’s 3-part photographic series traces the layered emotions of navigating a personal life transition. Working with cyanotype, glass, silk, and paper, each piece reflects a different perspective on change—looking back, turning inward, and flowing forward.
Inspired by the Chinese proverb 上善若水 (“the highest good is like water”) and the water town of 朱家角 (Zhujiajiao), the series uses water as both material and metaphor. It recurs as a visual motif—reflections, ripples, shifting light—and shapes the cyanotype process, physically washing over and unpredictably altering each image. In this process—where light imprints, pigments bleed, and surfaces resist—water becomes a quiet but powerful force, reflecting the emotional currents of change.
Exhibited in ACENTRICSPACE, Shanghai, China, April 2025.
1/Afloat
Three black-and-white self-portraits printed on silk paper. April 2025.
To float is to trust. These portraits reflect the tension of surrender—of beginning again without knowing where it leads. There’s vulnerability but also resilience in letting go. Suspended in the in-between, the body becomes both question and answer.
2/ Streams of Consciousness
Cyanotype on mulberry silk paper using digital negatives. April 2025.
This piece follows the flow of memory—the way quiet days, passing faces, and reflections in water shape who we are. These fragments are not remarkable on their own, but together they form something tender. Like a stream, they carry us forward before we even notice we've moved. All photos were taken locally in the water town of Zhujiajiao in the April of 2025.
3/ Surface Tension
Three cyanotypes on glass using digital negatives. April 2025.
A self-portrait sits obscured by uneven, gelatin-coated layers of waves and a blurred swirl of plants underwater. Beneath the surface, light warps and edges blur. These images capture the moment before clarity—a state between chaos and calm as the self dissolves into water.
