Chun Li

At the beginning of the project, I started looking through my social media for people on my friends list whom I had never really had the chance to engage with, or people I had met once or twice but barely spoken to. Chun Li was on that list, so I contacted her.

She told me, “Call me Liz.” A Chinese filmmaker who has been based in Thailand since 2012, she had quite a few stories to tell, and I quickly felt that I had made the right choice in reaching out to her.

Liz chose her own home for the shoot, which was also her office and working space. She has more than a decade of experience in the film and creative industries in both China and Thailand, and the house carried traces of that life and work. Her cat Leo was there waiting for me too, wandering into the frame from time to time. It was such a big house for one person. She took me upstairs to her studio on the second floor, where we made a few portraits.

Back downstairs, we started playing with a bubble-blowing toy in front of her huge mirror. A few hours earlier, I had never had a real conversation with Liz. I had only met her once or twice at events.

That afternoon made me realise something about the power of photographing people. The camera could become a pretext to get closer to someone, to spend time with them in their own environment and to have conversations that might otherwise never happen. It reinforced the feeling that this project was moving in the right direction.