Words and Light

© 2017. Hongkeng Village (洪坑), Yongding County, Fujian, China. Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017. Portra 400, Canon EOS A2.

Thanks to jet lag, roosters cawing every two hours of the night, our continued awe of actually being in my grandmother’s ancestral village, and a sense of urgency to soak it all in before the daily hordes of tourists arrived, we woke up early on our first morning in China and immediately set out to explore 洪坑 (Hongkeng Village).

© 2017. Hongkeng Village (洪坑), Yongding County, Fujian, China. Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017. Portra 400, Canon EOS A2.

Everything was as if we were seeing it for the first time. By the previous evening’s post-dinner tea, the blanket of nightfall, aided by the absence of bright electric lights in this remote country, had fallen. It was in heavy, humid darkness punctuated only by an occasional walkway lamp that we’d taken our bags to the hotel, then returned to the «tulou» for our nighttime tour, then crept back to the hotel.

© 2017. Hongkeng Village (洪坑) and Zhencheng Lou (振成樓), Yongding County, Fujian, China. Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017. Portra 400, Canon EOS A2.

In the morning, wandering through 洪坑, making our way to the «tulou» before sitting down at a groaning table of breakfast, we relished seeing the village with fresh eyes in new sunlight.

This «homelandcoming» series features film I shot when I traveled with my grandmother in 2017 to her ancestral home in China, which she had not seen in 74 years.

Some frames show the postcard-perfect scenery of «tulou» (“earthen buildings”) practically untouched by time; others reveal the everyday details that fascinated or amused us, and served to remind us that modern-day life continues for the residents who remain.

As a whole, this series is not a comprehensive visual diary of our trip — rather, it is a selection of a selection, showing the intersections of history and modernity, of authenticity and tourism, and of foreign and familiar.