Read Your Photography | “Surely We’ll Find a Home, Too” | Focus #730

Read Your Photography turns its attention to the stories behind photographs—the narratives that cannot be encountered through looking alone. Accompanied by works gathered through the photo poster project organized by cizucu and through social media, cizucu Magazine translates the circumstances in which each photograph was created, along with the personal moments it preserves, into 12 languages and shares them with audiences around the world.

Keeping a story close to your heart is one choice. Yet its sentiment may quietly touch someone else and inspire an emotion still waiting to be discovered.

This edition presents works by three photographers from around the world.
Let us gently step into their singular stories.

beesleepy

📷 Canon EOS M50
📚 01

I passed within a breath of someone else’s youth.
It was the students’ final day of term, and, as usual, I had gone to the seaside to make photographs.
There, by chance, I saw students playing volleyball on the beach. One leapt high into the air, poised to spike the ball with the setting sun behind them.

Only a few minutes of light remained before the sun slipped into the sea.
There was only an instant in which to meet that ball.
Yet within that instant shone the radiance of a season that would never return.

Even if Icarus’s flight was always destined to end in a fall, the fact that he truly reached toward the sky can never be erased.
I feel that this photograph holds the presence of youth—fleeting, yet dazzling.

cizucu Editorial Team
The photograph captures only an instant of bodily motion: a figure pursuing a ball in the evening light. Yet within that silhouette, we can also sense the exhilaration of the final day of term, the lingering trace of time spent with friends, and the atmosphere of a season drawing to a close. The sinking sun and the ball released into the sky—both are destined to vanish almost immediately, and it is precisely this transience that makes the moment resonate so powerfully. Perhaps youth is like a light we recognize only in retrospect. This photograph seems to hold its brilliance and fragility in quiet suspension.

jimmychiu

📚 02

That summer, before I left Europe. As an international student, my departure marked not only the end of my student life but also a time to bid farewell to the European landscapes I had come to love so deeply.
Before leaving, I wanted to settle my emotions, so I went to my favorite hill. It stood above a cliff, with the coast unfolding before me and a rock face rising to the left.
As I raised my camera, I began searching for a triangle within the viewfinder. First, several seagulls flew into my line of sight. Then, as though guided by the composition itself, a couple walked into the frame.

I held my breath and waited for the moment when the two figures aligned at the center of the triangle. Time seemed to slow, and all my attention converged on that single point.
Then I released the shutter.
It felt less like waiting for chance than gently catching hold of a landscape that would remain in my memory. My heart raced as I realized that the afternoon before me was being imprinted as something extraordinary.
It truly was a beautiful afternoon. I think that view will remain with me forever, like a small gift encountered at the close of my days in Europe.

cizucu Editorial Team
Within this vast landscape, the photograph reveals the diminutive scale of people who happened to be there—and, precisely because of that smallness, the intensity of their presence. A sheer cliff, a quietly expansive sea, and a coastline extending into the distance: amid this immense passage of time, the two figures near the bottom of the frame are remarkably small, yet they draw the eye with unexpected force. Because this was a landscape witnessed before a farewell, the work seems to inscribe both the end of a journey and the beginning of memory. A chance composition is transformed into a landscape emblematic of a particular season in a life. It is this quiet miracle that makes the work so beautiful.

Izzy Hung

📚 03

On Mother’s Day, my beloved cat, Yuki, brought her life to a close with one final cry.
For 11 years, she remained close to our family. She was always gentle, a quiet presence at the heart of our home. I am grateful to her beyond words.

Several weeks passed, and as the grief of saying goodbye to Yuki gradually began to settle into everyday life, my spouse and I decided to welcome another cat into our home—to encounter a new life and form another bond within our family.

On Sunday afternoon, we got into the car and drove to an animal shelter in Xinwu, Taoyuan. There, every life was doing its utmost to make it through the day in its own way.
One cat leaned out against the bars and called in a clear voice, as if crying, “Choose me! Choose me!” Another wore a slightly more mature expression that seemed to say, “Whether you take me home is for you to decide.”

In that place, where commotion and stillness mingled, three kittens alone nestled together as though they were one small family.
Through the iron cage, they pressed close as if encouraging one another: “There are so many people here today. But it’s all right. Surely we’ll find a home, too.” Seeing them this way, I felt that even after loss, a new story could begin.

cizucu Editorial Team
In the small paws and gazes overlapping through the iron cage, we sense an inexpressible anxiety as well as the warmth of lives sustaining one another. Rendered in monochrome, the texture of their fur, the nuances of their expressions, and the coldness of the metal acquire an even quieter immediacy. What we see is at once a scene from an animal shelter and an image that touches the heart of someone seeking a new bond after loss. Even within a confined space, they continue to wait for someone, reaching toward tomorrow. The strength and tenderness of these small lives make this an artwork that lingers deeply in the memory.

What did you think?
We want to attend to the qualities that cannot be fully conveyed through the visual alone. Read Your Photography is an editorial series that looks toward the thoughts and emotions held within a photograph, receiving them as a story.

What is pictured lasts only an instant. Yet behind it lies time that has undeniably continued to flow, along with emotions that never found their way into words.
We invite you to experience each photograph as though reading it—and as though turning the pages of a story.

From time to time, cizucu posts a “photography theme” on Threads.
Simply reply with one of your works that responds to the theme.

There is only one participation requirement: follow cizucu on social media 💙
From among the submitted works,
selected artists will receive a message from the cizucu Editorial Team!

Read Your Photography also features works exhibited through the photo poster project (ppp), organized by cizucu.

ppp may be taking place in your country as well. Encounters connected simply by a shared love of photography are now expanding across the world.