A photographer’s sensual ode to life between Chengdu and NYC

There’s a quiet poetry to Yuhan Cheng’s photo diary 窗子外 Outside the Window, Inside the Tank 鱼缸里 that draws you in and holds you close. It’s the way their lens moves fluidly between the visceral and the ethereal, tracing the scars of everyday existence while hinting at possibilities beyond it. Angel wings tattooed onto a friend’s shoulder blades find their mirror in a naked back reddened by the marks of gua sha, and again in the broken, bloodied feathers of a dead bird. “I love the idea of wings because they can be both beautiful and heavy,” the photographer tells Dazed in a conversation over the phone. “They’re a symbol of escape and protection, but also the weight of what's holding you down. A reminder of how the body carries wounds and aspirations, pain and healing.”

This story unfolds throughout the series, which began in 2021 and now comprises 70 photographs, three short documentaries, and an installation. Spanning snapshots of life in Cheng’s hometown, Chengdu, and their new home in New York, 窗子外 Outside the Window, Inside the Tank 鱼缸里 is a hypnotic exploration of identity, intimacy, and the act of confronting oneself.

Now 24, Cheng’s desire to enshrine the little things dates back to high school, when they’d capture “fleeting moments that felt special, people I cared about, places I moved through” on their phone camera. Sleepovers were one of the rituals they held most sacred, “those late nights with friends when everything seemed honest because the darkness allowed for more openness.” Even now, their series is filled with images of unmade beds and crumpled sheets; the sites of our most tender moments.

As Cheng nurtured their talent, they zoomed in on artists exploring intimacy – Nan Goldin, Sally Mann, and Peter Hujar – and expanded their scope through the documentary works of Muge, Greg Girard, and Chien-Chi Chang. “It was during puberty, a time when I felt a strong desire to escape my surroundings and see the world beyond,” they recall.

Cheng’s first official photo series was Princess of Funan River, a documentary project about queerness and gender identity among their friendship circle in Chengdu. Growing up in a conservative military household, Cheng had always struggled to feel at home within themself. Gradually, through this project, photography helped to remedy that. “I saw my own queer identity reflected in my friends, their spaces, the city itself, and the fluid relationship between these things,” they explain. “People change like the tides. Buildings are built and torn down. The Funan River will eventually converge with the Yangtze and flow to the ocean. No water remains the same.”

After moving to New York to study film, Cheng continued to meditate on themes of belonging, “whether to a place, a chosen family, or to oneself”. But while Princess of Funan River looked outward at their hometown, 窗子外 Outside the Window, Inside the Tank 鱼缸里 turned inward, focusing on their body and the feelings of isolation they experienced in the unfamiliar city. 

During their first week in New York, Cheng took a nude self-portrait for a class assignment. It was their first nude, but they felt safe in the privacy of the experiment, having just learned how to process black and white photographs alone in the makeshift darkroom in their bedroom. “It wasn't a big moment until I saw the image floating in the developer,” they explain. “Seeing myself looking back at me, suspended in the water, it reminded me of the fish tank in my mother’s home in Chengdu – fluid but confined. I began to see my body, my room and my city as containers.” With that realisation, their series started to take shape as an exploration of all the small worlds that exist within the larger one.

A month later, quite serendipitously, Cheng stumbled across an abandoned fish tank left on a curb. When they came to exhibit 窗子外 Outside the Window, Inside the Tank 鱼缸里 at FAR–NEAR Studio Hours in Chinatown in late summer, they filled the tank with water and placed their nude portrait inside it. Over the three weeks the installation was on display, the submerged photograph began to blur and decay; mold crept across its surface, ink bled into the water. It was no longer a static snapshot, but a body in its own right, bearing its own blemishes and bruises. The installation became an act of exposure in more ways than one.

“That whole process, from taking the nude to watching it decay, was about confronting my own vulnerability,” Cheng reflects. “Cracks and scars tell a story that’s layered – of trauma, healing, transformation. For me, these elements are more powerful than anything pristine because they speak to the complexities of being alive, of constantly changing, and of holding our broken parts together.” From moments of softness among friends and family to harsher reckonings in the solitude of a bedroom, Cheng’s series meditates on what it is to be known – by others, but most importantly by ourselves.

Visit the gallery above for a closer look.