Yuanlin 員林

Ongoing Photo Series

An urban rezoning of my hometown cut through my childhood home in Yuanlin, Taiwan, when I was fourteen. The town became a “city,” and the clatter of construction joined bird chirps in the morning chorus. When I returned home after five years abroad, the grief towards the changes surrounding our house seeped in. New buildings, construction sites and empty lots barricaded for future development occupy my neighborhood. I realized that we live constantly in the legacy of that urban planning, even more evidently a decade later. "What is this development taking away? What is it leaving behind? What does it deconstruct, and what might it reconstruct?” I began to wonder. This project reflects the urbanization of Yuanlin by capturing how enduring natural elements intertwine with traces of city development and human activities.