Jumbo has an eye like no other. For a creative like him, every walk is a form of artistic research. Long before he was working as an editorial photographer, he was wandering through city streets with a keen eye, observing for the sake of admiring the world. That same curiosity has now seeped into his work.
What initially drew you into editorials?
My first editorial happened right after I moved to Paris. The city felt completely different from the environment I had known while studying in China, and everything around me felt new.
I spent about a month just walking through the city and watching people. My major at university was game design, so I was very much a coding nerd at the time. At first, I would simply use my phone to record interesting people I saw on the street, then imagine full stories around them and post those little stories on Chinese social media.
One day, Harper’s Bazaar China reached out and asked if I would be interested in shooting a fashion story in Paris based on those writings. The theme was quite open, so I turned those small stories into a series of human portraits. That became my first editorial.
What’s the longest walk you’ve gone on?
If we’re talking about walking in a city, the longest one was probably in Paris. I walked all the way from Guy Môquet in the north of Paris to the Bois de Vincennes in the southeast, wandering around as I went. That record is from 2010, the very first time I came to Paris.
Do you like keeping your shoes pristine or letting them have well-lived lives?
My friends always say I’m someone who destroys shoes very quickly. Whether it’s a pair of evening shoes bought for a very specific reason, or sneakers I bought almost by accident, I somehow end up wearing them so intensely that they start to look like an 18th-century vintage archive piece.
But I don’t mind when shoes stop looking new. In fact, every time I look at them, I remember what I was doing when I wore them: the muddy places I stepped in, the streets I walked through, or even the places where I fell over. I feel like shoes are a little like tree rings. The difference is that tree rings get thicker and thicker, as if they are afraid of being forgotten. Shoes get thinner and thinner, as if that is the price of growing up, and they keep moving forward anyway.
What does your photography say about how you move through the world?
I usually define myself more as a portrait photographer, and maybe I’m always trying to find a slightly specific language for each person I photograph.
I’m drawn to people with strong personalities because everyone is complicated in their own way. Before a shoot, I usually do a lot of research, and from that research, I start to form my own impression of the person. Then I try to stretch that impression into a kind of fictional story, and translate the character in that story into visual symbols. For me, photography doesn’t always have to be direct documentary. It can also be a kind of abstract realism. On a shoot, especially when time is limited, it almost feels like making a tiny film very quickly: the story starts fast, ends fast, and then later, through editing and a kind of montage, I project my impression of that person back into the images.
That process is quite close to how I move through the world too. I observe, imagine, misunderstand a little, understand a little more, and then turn all of that into a story.
What’s your dream outdoor location for a photoshoot?
Wow, that’s actually a hard one. Usually, when I encounter a place or a story, I don’t immediately want to preserve it as an image. I prefer to write it down on my phone, leave it in my imagination for a while, and then translate it into images later.
That said, I’ve always wanted to go to South America, but I haven’t had the chance yet. So… looking at Office… maybe we should plan a South America story together?
If you exclusively wore Jaspers for a month, what would they have to say about your whereabouts?
I think the dirt on them would tell the whole story. There might be a matcha latte stain from LA, the grip-tape print from a Lime scooter in London, and maybe a little part of them slightly melted during the Paris heatwave.
For now, though, the front of the shoes could already tell the story of this Office shoot. I climbed across so many walls sideways like a ninja that I’m pretty sure the soles are now part of the production diary, haha.
