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“Being a woman isn’t a gender; it’s a situation,” writes feministscholar Chizuko Ueno. Fantasy in Pink explores this idea through photographic portraits of East Asian women, particularly Chinese, who have left their homelands for large cities abroad. Despite the economic opportunities, family, and other reasons that drive these women far from their familiar worlds, they often face various hardships that relate both to their origin and to their gender, while also being deeply shaped by the lasting influence of their homeland. Their story is also my own story, which is why I myself am one of the project’s subjects.
My portrait subjects were eight Chinese women so far , all born between 1960 and 2000, and all based in New York City. Some of them were my friends; others were women I found on social media who expressed a willingness to share their stories. Each participant represents a specific theme, including but not limited to family of origin; anxiety related to identity, fertility, and career; marital status; and the extent of their intimate relationships. At the same time, they represent differences in gender identity, self-awareness, and cultural belonging. It was clear to me that for them, being in a foreign country heightened these issues.
I invited my chosen subjects into the studio, engaging in in-depth conversations with each of them before the session started. When it came time for photography, in addition to identifiable portraits, I shot body close-ups, usually of their hands, against a uniformly pink background. chose the color pink based on my long-term experience as a photographer, as it is frequently used in commercial and fashion photography to represent female-oriented concepts. From a social perspective, pink has been closely associated with women from birth, permeating visual domains such as film, media advertising, female products, and everyday visual symbols.
Pink Fantasy seeks idealized notions of femininity. I also asked my subjects to choose a fruit that they felt somehow represented themselves, then included the fruit in the photographs. As with the color pink, fruits are often associated with femininity. Women are frequently compared to juicy, sensual fruits in literature, film, and everyday discourse—metaphors that carry strong implications of social discipline and the male gaze. Here, pink and fruits become an open-ended question through which I seek to explore female subjectivity and how society constructs expectations and fantasies around women.