Journey

My first major photography journey. I arrived drawn to landscapes and unfamiliar traditions, but began noticing the quieter acts of faith and everyday relationships that remained with me long after the trip.

I interviewed six Japanese entrepreneurs who had built lives and businesses in China, then wrote their stories. The project introduced me to interviewing as another form of crossing cultural distance: listening closely enough to understand a life from someone else's point of view.

Time spent with local families changed the way I photographed. Friendship came before the image. I became increasingly drawn to shared meals, children playing, family conversations, and the warmth of everyday life.

At the annual June Festival, I saw how ritual could do more than preserve a tradition: it could bring people home, renew shared memory, and reaffirm belonging.

Spending time with Kinnara dancers brought me behind the performance—into years of practice, hand-built costumes, faith, discipline, and the individuals who choose to keep an inherited art alive.

Living with a local healer and his family expanded my questions from visible traditions toward the ways culture shapes trust, healing, family, and community care.

An Eternal Flame brought several years of photography into one exhibition. Sharing these stories in Japan made the project itself a form of cultural exchange: carrying encounters from one place into another and inviting new audiences to meet the people behind them.