Intimacy.
“My Leaf City project is about intimacy, about revealing the personal and private world of a person, and about building a form of communication to connect to that inner world. It’s about telling your personal stories. It’s about sharing. It’s about opening up. It’s about chance. It’s about being in your own skin. I think my approach to photography is similar to my approach to this project. I’m trying to capture the personal, the emotional, the intimate and the distant aspect of the moment in life.”
Sabah — Amsterdam.Leaf City is a project initiated by Qing Qing Mao in 2012. She envisions the world as a big tree, thus, she started to travel and observe the different leafs of this tree, which are the beautiful cities and people who live there. Rather than explore a city with a map, Qing Qing discover it through the personal story of the city dwellers.
QQ: Jamie–i love this shot!it feels like the message is “the world seems too much to handle, but somehow i find a way to handle it”.
exactly the spirit of our conversation! — Jamie, Sydney.
Surely Qing Qing has a special way to discover a city. Rather than a map or worst the GPS in our phone, she enjoys getting lost in conversations. Stories are such a powerful driver of emotional value that added to the influence or connection that they have with the city… make everything that has been told a precious revealed treasure.
Bridgette — Sydney.Leaf City is a complex work in progress that includes, photos, stories and graphic. Qing Qing is curating every details of her books. I perceive the making of these books like a tree evolution, we need to wait the different seasons to enjoy the majesty of the tree in its different colors and shapes.
Vincent:he said he’s running out of socks that morning…
She has a ‘big working progress’ with the creation of Leaf City Berlin, Sydney, Amsterdam. Recently she visited Zaandam. Next to the intriguing stories that the images trigger us to create, I would like to invite you to discover the beautiful photos she took. You know, I do tend to get a bit carried away but I really loved the particularity and details captured in Qing Qing photos! They are special like the stories she collected.
Winston — Manly Beach, Sydney Australia.“My work is about revealing intimacy, is about exploring intimacy through communication, both verbally and visually. it’s about discovering personal relationships, the relationship with “self” and “others”. So yes, intimacy is a major theme in my work.”
Discover more about Qing Qing Mao.
Armando — Amsterdam.
