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Discover Annie Xu: Creative Work
Photography, Image Editing, Double Exposure
Emergence
A Photo Essay
From a selected photo, a voice emerges. Sometimes it comes as a single word, other times a phrase, an onomatopoeia, or even a white noise. Sometimes, it is lingual, meta-lingual, or even completely beyond the capacity of language, making it hard to put down into text form. Reflecting on a fleeting thought that comes and goes as we proceed in life, we want to explore the momentary discoveries so as to honor the exchange between different worlds/words. We want to write as though to think, perhaps courageously enough so that minimally processed words might freely emerge.
A Silent Echo: My Eyes and Their Shapes
Vassar is a very small campus. We hear and read people’s stories all the time in passing. Never have I ever stopped and looked back to figure out whose stories these were. Now that I am about to depart, I am struck by a strong sentiment to linger. Reminiscence is the strongest hook.
A story can take on many forms. It can be a quote on the bathroom wall. It can be a set of graffiti on classroom chairs. It might even be a displaced portrait that no one knew who took or for what purpose it was taken. There is no certainty in these stories I witnessed, and there is always a story within a story. It is perhaps easy to recall and repeat a spoken sentence, but how does one converse with words that no longer have an origin? Seeing echo as the theme of this issue, I am seized by an urge to challenge myself and document these scattered narratives as a graduation gift for myself and a salute to whoever so generously shared their stories with me, perhaps unknowingly before and during my four years of stay.
