Advisor: Patricia Maurides

These are 4 series of street photography that I took from February 2021 to April 2021.

Searching Happiness

In today’s society, people can’t breathe because of too much pressure; they have no time to enjoy happiness because of overload work. I walked on the streets, observed people, and photographed a series of happy moments. Sometimes, we just need to stop our steps and slow down time so that we can enjoy the present moment and enjoy happiness.

Lhasa, The City They Live

Lhasa is the capital city of the world-famous province of Tibet. The people here are hospitable and the scenery here is beautiful. However, for political reasons, many western media constantly stigmatize Tibet. According to these media, the Tibetan people are enslaved by the government, they are kept in concentration camps, they have no freedom of speech, no freedom of religion, etc. Therefore, I decided to go to Lhasa and take pictures of what I saw of the real-life of the people in Lhasa.

Tell Me About You

My mother grew up in a small county when she was in primary school. The town was made up of a copper factory and a number of dormitories. This is where some of her most wonderful memories as a child are kept. She was raised by her grandmother, who made all her income from the small grocery store she owned. According to my mother, all the values and attitudes she has now come from this old woman. Her grandmother taught her to be strong, not to give up, and to be grateful. So I decided to visit the small town and trace my mother’s past.

Capture The Moment

After about ten years of learning photography, I began to think about whether I need to break some traditional rules of composition and make my works more readable. Therefore, I went out on the street and broke some of the traditional concepts of photography, and created a series of works.

More works can be viewed from here: https://www.instagram.com/drewmaa/ 

Advisor: Jason Paradis

Trial on B&W Oil Portraiture

I took a half-length portrait as my reference to create a series of works with a clean background and facial details that can express figures’ emotions clearly. I only used black and white oil paints in this series of portrait oil paintings, with the purpose of exploring “the possibility of using B&W oil paint”, “the feasibility of strong contrast in B&W oil paintings” and “the difference of details between oil painting art and photographs”.

During the process of painting and communication with the professor, I realized how the importance of the degree of gray in B&W oil painting is. How to make the picture more three-dimensional through the seemingly simple black and white is the difficulty I have been overcoming. Moreover, I realized that the edges between the figure and background are obvious in digital photos. But it’s a little different in oil painting. The edges of the figure need to be blended in with the background to some extent. So that the relationship between the two doesn’t seem too abrupt.