Lives and works in Shenyang

You Li calls herself an observer. Her presence in her photographs is almost as transparent as the mist silently arising from the snowfield, lingering above the cold sky and vanishing away without a trace. However, You Li does own herself to the history of photography. Ahead of her we have Alec Soth, William Eggleston and August Sander, just to name a few.

The things we cherish the most reflect our views of the world. When You Li shared with me her fondness of Camille Pissarro’s paintings, I immediately connected it to her restrained personality. I could see how she enjoys life in the snowfield and wilderness over that in the secular, urban society. I imagine that she might even have be able to hear piano music played by Eggleston when she took up photography. Of course, most of us do not have the opportunity to listen to Eggleston playing. But when looking at his work, we instantly detect the melodious quality which he captured masterfully in his photographs. It seems that action transforms itself firstly into music and eventually rests as soundless peace on photographic paper.

From You Li’s work, I also catched the staccato from Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations, so clear and levitative that I felt as if I was floating in a transparent, alien space, deprived of all traits of nationality, culture and individuality. This particular sense of clearness is what positions You Li’s photographs beyond time and awareness. It also enables the photographer to tell stories of places she visited and people she encountered from an open perspective - the same perspective as seen in the work of the photography school which she emerged from.

What kinds of places are they, the ones that You Li photograph? Are they synonyms of loneliness, as suggested by Gould’s music? You, alone, wander and roam the great northern field. Your mind is your sole company. From time to time, you encounter strangers who hold their own confusions and secrets in silence, just as you do. Secrets. Yes. It’s secrets that make You Li and her subject matters equal. Hence the photographer and the photographed are able to share their understanding of the northern loneliness silently under the frozen sky.

You Li longs for the north. However, her longing is neither a burning desire nor a romantic fantasy. She started out not to speak for a rural region nor on behalf of a group of people. What You Li offers us is merely a thin, almost invisible trail of footprints, which, in fragments of a second, will be covered by spring snow and disappear into the earth.