Don't leave me

These photographs are dedicated to my grandmother, the most tender yet strongest presence in my life.

For the majority of my grandmother life, she lived with strong strength and independence, and this female power deeply influenced me. Until four years ago, she faced a significant illness that compelled the removal of her uterus during surgery, an event that my father and I couldn't forget for a long time. As a child I was raised by my grandmother, who was like a motherly presence to me, and she lost the organ that represented nurturing and motherly love in this illness. The sudden physical transformation made my grandmother start to become fragile, not just in a physical sense, but also in her spirit. From then on, she often wept, and I knew she feared separation and feared death.

This turning point in my grandmother's life also led me to contemplate family, life, and death. I realized that my dearest loved ones cannot be with me forever. Like my grandmother, I feared the day when she would depart. I wanted to preserve as much as possible between us before that day arrived - to preserve the look in her eyes when she looked at me, the sensation of our hands touching, the landscapes we experienced together, and the traces of the life we had lived together. So, I used the most familiar medium to capture this series of photographs, which flowed like a prose poem, as a tribute to the ten years she has spent with me since I was two years old.

Dear grandmother, those were the happiest years of my childhood.