Yicheng Li

Parallel Worlds is a response to my first time to study in the UK. It is my reflection and presentation on the relationship between identity and environment. I create a lonely picture feeling, no one appears, but can feel the traces of human existence, which is a state of dissociation in the real world and the unreal world.

Due to my minority status, this was my first time abroad in 28 years, from the excitement of just arriving in London, to the joy of touring various European countries on my own, to the adjustment and numbness of my surroundings after a year. For me, it is a threefold transformation from China to foreign countries, from ethnic minority areas to international cities, from workers to students. It's a temporary change of place and identity. Sometimes walking in the street, the camera fixed the moment, I was in a trance, suddenly felt that the scene of that moment brought me back to China, looking at these scenes like in China and like abroad.

I use iPhone to shoot this photo. It’s all from behind people. I'm a Watcher, and it started with a movie. I want to say: We can only see what is in front of us, not what is behind us. At a deeper level, our viewing purposes are subjective, selective and restrictive.

I remember in the 《 Treatise on Logical Philosophy》, it says: “I am not in my world, I am the boundary of my world. ”I shoot different scenes, different people.