Borderland by Jiehao Su

Issue 66

Late in the winter of 2012, I began to work on Borderland, an ongoing project deeply rooted in my personal history. Borderland is like a mirror of sorts, reflecting my years of drifting and discovery in eastern and southern China. Perhaps more importantly, this work documents a life not dissimilar from my own childhood in suburban Guangdong.

I suffered through the death of my mother in 2006, when I was eighteen years old. I left home and found myself rapt in a nomadic state of being. I traveled from city to city, documenting what I saw at a sensitive distance. In both physical and psychological respects, the journey became a form of healing. I confronted and grew increasingly curious about issues of family, homeland, identity and existence.

The images I’ve captured for the past two years comprise my obsession with the boundaries between reality and imaginary, present experience and memory, isolation and belonging. I use both fiction and nonfiction as themes in my work to rebuild my self-awareness by trying to represent a version of homeland, as well as finding comfort through reconnection to the past. In this sense Borderland is more than the documentation of a journey; it is also an intimate work of remembrance, tenderness and self-consolation. 

Jiehao Su lives and works in Beijing, China.
To view more Jiehao's work, please visit his website.