Ang Li

Ang Li works with photography as a way of paying close attention—to places, people, and the quiet moments that often pass unnoticed. His projects draw from personal encounters, fieldwork, and lived experience, focusing on subjects that speak to care, distance, and the passage of time. Ang Li's works with both digital and analog processes, often combining archival research with direct observation. Whether documenting a remote village in Shanxi or capturing a fleeting gesture on a ferry, his photographs reflect a steady, thoughtful way of seeing that stays close to what is present.

Encounter - Digital photography, 2018

Q: What pushed you to leave computer science and focus on images instead?

A: I’ve always known that I love art and culture. My mom nurtured this passion from a young age — she would buy me international movies and TV series on DVD, which were rare and expensive in China back then. I’d spend hours on the couch, completely immersed in those stories. She also filled our home with classic literature, and I loved reading them. I took piano and drawing classes until high school, where I chose to study science. Looking back, I realise I was always doing something creative in one way or another, and those experiences really shaped my passion for art and, admittedly, my bad eyesight.

I’ve always been curious about the world and eager to tell stories — about myself, about others.

 In high school, I sought out writing as my medium.

I joined the literature society, wrote stories, editorials, and even helped publish our school magazine. But over time, I recognised that while I enjoyed writing, many of my peers were far more naturally gifted in it. I still write occasionally, but I understood it might not be my true calling.

When I entered university, my parents hoped I would pursue Mathematics and later Computer Science, believing it would secure a stable career for me. I wasn’t interested in either, but I followed the plan. Around that time, I bought my first proper camera and started teaching myself photography. I loved using that camera to take photos, but I only used it as a toy to have fun or make memories on trips. Even though, unconsciously, I was already starting to tell stories through the images, it never occurred to me that this could be a career — in my world, no one made a living as an artist. In my family, we believed art was either a luxury for the wealthy or a fallback for the academically unsuccessful.

While I was performing well in Computer Science — even winning academic scholarships — I was deeply unhappy. In my second year, I added a double degree in Communication, where I took courses in Film History, Script Writing, Photography, and Videography. For the first time, I learned how to tell stories through images, and it felt instinctive. When I used a camera to observe the world, it felt natural, like I’d finally found the language I was meant to speak.

French filmmaker Éric Rohmer once asked, “If one can be a writer, why would one be a filmmaker?” It’s not that I think filmmaking is lesser than writing, but I believe there’s a decisive difference in how stories are told through images versus words. I realised that for me, the camera is the pen I’m meant to hold.

Eventually, I convinced my parents to let me switch majors and pursue Communication full-time — something I’m still grateful for.

In 2018, I went to Laojing Village in China for field research and started my documentary photography and filmmaking journey. Since then, I’ve been telling stories through visual art, and I can’t imagine doing anything else.

Q: What makes a small or quiet moment stand out to you?

A: For me, a moment or subject never stands out simply because of what it is. It matters when it reflects something I’m thinking or feeling — when it connects to an inner thread I’m following in that instant, no matter how big, small, loud, or quiet it might be. In traditional Chinese culture, there’s a belief in an invisible bond connecting people, nature, and the universe — a web of relationships rather than isolated things. While I don’t fully subscribe to the idea of fate, I do believe in the unseen connections between moments, people, and their environments. That’s probably why I’m always drawn to the interactions between a subject’s inner world and its outer surroundings. For me, photographs aren’t about isolated beauty; they’re about relationships — the spaces between things, the tension, or harmony that exists in the quiet.

I’m most fascinated by images with background stories, ones that leave space for curiosity or invite the viewer to imagine what’s unseen. I’m not the kind of photographer who moves people with instantly striking images alone; my instinct is to express thoughts and explore concepts through the subjects I frame.

For example, my ongoing documentary project "Aliens", currently showing at Fringe Bath Arts Festival, focuses on artificial fences and barriers. On the surface, they’re mundane and often overlooked. But by treating them as subjects in their own right, I want to explore how these human-made divisions shape our environments, alienate other species, and quietly separate us from ourselves.

So in a way, for me, no moment is too small or too quiet — as long as it carries a connection worth exploring.

By Your Side - Film photography, 2024

Q: How did your time in Laojing shift the way you think about distance and privilege?

A: This is a very interesting question. Before my time in Laojing, I had thought about distance and privilege individually, but never considered how closely they are connected.

When we talk about distance, it only makes sense when there are at least two subjects involved. The same applies to privilege — it exists in relation to others. Within the system of global capitalism, privilege operates like the radiation from a lamp, with the “bulb” representing the places where capital is most concentrated. In this framework, one might assume that the closer a community is to the “bulb,” the more privileged it is — and vice versa. This seems logical on the surface, and inequality appears inevitable, even if you look at it through the lens of physics.

The problem with this seemingly reasonable theory is that it’s built upon two flawed concepts that shouldn’t exist in this context in the first place — yet they were invented to separate people from one another, both within and beyond our own species. One way to dismantle this argument is to ask simple but fundamental questions:

Why should capital be gathered in certain places by certain people? Why should basic human rights be distributed as privileges, granted by some to others? Who truly benefits from this arrangement?

At its core, this is a variation of Social Darwinism, repackaged to justify capitalism, colonialism, and the failing global economic and political systems we live under today.

I have always been a political person, and I always will be. For me, being political isn’t just about elections, governments, or parliaments. It’s about constantly questioning authority, and — more broadly — interrogating the legitimacy of the global systems we’ve built and whether they deserve to continue existing. My time in Laojing Village shifted how I approach these questions.

When I met this unrepresented community face-to-face, they ceased to be an abstract idea. They became tangible human beings — people who feel pain, have needs, laugh, and look up at the sky when a breeze passes. In those moments, the usual narratives of elections, governments, and economic theories lost their meaning. All I cared about was how I could help.

That experience also revealed another layer to the relationship between distance and privilege. By shortening both the physical and emotional distance between myself and the villagers of Laojing, I became more aware of my own privileges. As a citizen, I recognized the privilege of living a life where I never had to worry about food or warmth, while villagers relied on shared water taps for basic needs. As an artist, I felt privileged to be accepted into their community, to be trusted, and to be given the opportunity to document their lives.

For me, a good artist cannot remain distant from real life and society. At least, I cannot. Art, in its most meaningful form, is not just about aesthetics or abstract concepts — it’s about people, stories, and the realities that shape our existence. My experience in Laojing made me realize that creating art detached from lived human experiences can feel hollow. It’s one thing to read about inequality, displacement, or poverty in books or reports, but it’s entirely different to witness it, to share space with those who endure it, and to be welcomed into their lives.

In those moments, I felt an even greater sense of responsibility as both an artist and a human being. 

The privilege of mobility, education, and access to resources comes with the obligation to not merely observe but to engage, to amplify voices that have been overlooked, and to challenge the structures that keep them unheard. Through my work, I hope to create a bridge — not just between different communities, but between lived experiences and the systems that so often fail to account for them.

Art can be a form of resistance, of remembrance, and of solidarity. It can preserve the dignity of those who have been marginalized and provoke uncomfortable but necessary conversations about who holds power and why. 

My time in Laojing wasn’t just a project or a chapter in my career; it was a fundamental shift in how I see my role in the world — as an artist, as a citizen, and as a fellow human being navigating the complex relationship between distance and privilege.

Wings - Digital photography, 2025

Q: What decides whether a story becomes a photo or a film?

A: As a cross-disciplinary visual artist, this is actually a difficult question to answer. If I must give an answer, I would say: time.

By this, I don’t mean the amount of time an artist spends on an artistic project (although the time span is certainly an important element in the creative process), but rather whether a story needs to be shaped by a continuous sequence of images, captured within an unbroken stretch of time, in order to mirror the passage of time itself.

A photograph is a frame in which a specific moment in time is frozen. The duration of this moment can vary according to the subject matter — it might be as short as 1/4000 of a second or as long as 10 hours — but regardless of the exposure time, the resulting image, as an art piece, as a still object, ultimately exists outside of time. 

The time a viewer spends looking at the photograph is not restricted by the artist, and when the audience views a photograph, the work itself doesn’t present any sense of time passing. 

Furthermore, if the artist chooses not to guide the viewer with titles or explanatory text, very often the audience is free to let their imagination wander and construct their own interpretation of the work.

A film, on the other hand, is made up of countless photographs — countless points in time connected by extremely short intervals. The audience must watch the film within a fixed timeframe, and the timeframe each frame or scene is viewed is also determined by the artist’s creative choices. In a sense, a film is a virtual world created by the artist, one that exists parallel to the real world for a brief period of time, and unless the viewer consciously withdraws, their sense of time — and even of space — is controlled by the artist within that duration. While the audience’s understanding of the film is not entirely dictated by the artist, the combination of literary, visual, and musical elements in filmmaking often guides how viewers interpret the work.

It’s much like one of the essential differences between theater and cinema: film, through the movement and framing of the camera, can dictate where the audience focuses their attention, whereas theater finds it much harder to force the audience’s gaze to any one particular point on stage. The decisive difference between photography and film lies in their respective relationships with time and control over it. From the viewer’s perspective, film exerts a far greater degree of control over the audience than photography does.

And it isn’t only the audience that’s bound by these temporal factors — the artist must also create according to them. In photography, artists generally have much more creative freedom; the timeframe of an artistic project is more flexible, the themes they can choose are broader, and the ways of presenting the final work are more varied. In contrast, because of its very nature as an art form, film’s timeframe, themes, and presentation methods are far more constrained.

I believe that for any story, there’s no such thing as a ‘best’ artistic medium. This is especially true for me — my last experimental short film was essentially a movie composed of many photographic works. For any story, what matters most isn’t which medium the artist chooses, but rather how the artist uses that chosen medium as a tool to the fullest extent possible to tell the story they want to tell.

Q: What draws you to hands, posture, and gesture in your images?

A: Our body is a powerful, instinctive language — it expresses unspoken feelings, emotions, and relationships, often more honestly and swiftly than our consciousness allows. 

As I mentioned in previous answers, the core inspiration behind my work lies in exploring the interaction and relationship between subjects and their surroundings. 

Every subtle movement, every particular placement of the body, is a reaction to the environment and to others sharing that space.

I also have a fascination with close-ups. I’m drawn to the textures and intimate details — the wrinkles of skin, the flicker of emotion in an eye, the pattern of fabric, or the dust in someone’s hair. These quiet details tell more layered, authentic stories than one might expect.

And sometimes, it’s the absence that speaks loudest. The void beyond the frame, the body fragment, or a suspended gesture invites the viewer’s imagination to complete the narrative. By focusing on parts rather than wholes, I aim to open a larger, more personal space for interpretation — allowing viewers to insert their own stories between what’s seen and what’s left unseen.

Q: How do you stay connected to feeling while you work?

A: I’ve always believed that every artwork is a reflection of the artist in that moment. Even when I'm working on a project about someone else’s story, at its core, it’s still about how I interpret the world and approach that story. 

For me, art creation can never be separated from my feelings.

I tend to get deeply involved with my projects and subjects — an approach some other artists have critiqued. 

But for me, genuine trust and emotional connection with the people I work with is essential. I simply can’t create a photography collection or film if I don’t feel a personal resonance with the story or subject.

Another way I stay connected to feeling is by giving myself space and time before entering post-production. 

Especially in filmmaking, I always need to step back and breathe before diving into editing. Taking that pause allows me to return with fresh eyes, and often, I discover something new in the work after a little distance.

And, of course — physical exercise! Photography and filmmaking aren’t just brain work; they’re physical labor too. Staying physically healthy isn’t just good for your career, it keeps your personal life in balance and your creative energy alive.