Berlin Notebook

Christopher Isherwood once wrote 'Berlin meant boys.' I took that line with me to travel to Berlin, only to imagine that I always belonged there.

'Berlin Notebook' began during a residency in Berlin in 2019, which then gradually evolved into a constellation of photos and texts. My initial interest in Berlin, which echoed Christopher Isherwood’s secret desires in his novel The Berlin Stories (he once wrote ‘Berlin meant boys’), was confronted with the renewed vibrance of another century. I was then preoccupied with a new set of questions: what if I always belonged there? what if I was one of them? Berlin thus became incredibly familiar — just like Chicago and the US, my new home, a place that I came to, where I was afforded an opportunity to reflect and to reimagine who I could have been. With this question in mind, this project begins where seeking leads me to — through photography, I encounter and engage, feel and love, identify; through text, I work through the contradictions of life, memory, reality, and fantasy.