Read Your Photography turns its gaze toward the “stories” behind photographs—stories that cannot be encountered through looking alone. Alongside works gathered through the cizucu-hosted photo poster project and social media, cizucu Magazine translates the circumstances in which each photograph was created and the personal moments it holds into 12 languages, sharing them with audiences around the world.
Keeping a story close to your heart is one choice. Yet those feelings may quietly touch someone else and inspire a sense of wonder still unknown.
This edition presents works by three photographers from around the world.
Let us take a gentle look into their singular stories.
林大哀’s Story
Photograph by 林大哀
林大哀
📚 01
It was 2007, when I was at university. The afternoon after spending all night awake with friends, I opened my eyes to find my beloved cat, 小葵, sitting by the window.
But that day, 小葵 was not looking outside as she usually did. She was staring intently at the wardrobe. For some reason, I was drawn to that unassuming pose and instinctively pressed the shutter.
Immediately after I had taken the photograph, she leapt onto the wardrobe.
Nothing extraordinary happened. To the person I was then, it was simply an ordinary afternoon. Even so, whenever I sorted through my photographs, this was the one work I always kept.
It seems to preserve even the atmosphere of my university years: sleeping until the afternoon, simply passing time with friends, free from the demands of work or tomorrow’s schedule. Those were open-ended, carefree days.
Only now does this photograph show me how precious that afternoon truly was.
cizucu Editorial Team
The silhouette of a cat seated by a window. What we see is not an extraordinary event, but a quiet moment that arrived unexpectedly amid everyday life. Viewed again after time has passed, however, the photograph becomes more than a simple record. Sleeping until the afternoon, spending time with friends, living without having to think too deeply about tomorrow—photography gently returns even the atmosphere and emotions we thought we had forgotten. This work evokes that mysterious power of the medium.
Shih Hsun Chao’s Story
Photograph by Shih Hsun Chao
Shih Hsun Chao
📷 Canon EOS R1
📚 02
I wanted to photograph something a little unusual in Taipei. That was the thought with which I first began walking through the city.
As I continued photographing, the things that caught my eye gradually changed: objects standing alone, apart from people; things whose forms shift within the city and seem destined one day to disappear. I found myself naturally drawn to such scenes.
At Bitan Scenic Area in Xindian, where this photograph was made, the swan boats are lifted by crane and moved to safety whenever a typhoon approaches.
I grew up around this place and have witnessed both its liveliest years and its gradual transformation. Perhaps that is why the swan boat suspended in midair appeared to me like a presence severed from the water where it belonged.
In truth, it is merely a man-made object. Even so, it somehow resembled a living creature, quietly trying to communicate something.
cizucu Editorial Team
A swan boat suspended not on the water, but in midair. This slightly uncanny scene carries the quiet dissonance particular to something removed from everyday life. For Shih Hsun Chao, this is a landscape he has known since childhood. The sight of the boats being evacuated ahead of a typhoon may therefore have appeared not simply as one stage in a routine operation, but as something layered with memories and the city’s transformation. Displaced from where it belongs, a man-made object begins to resemble a living creature. This photograph draws out a small sense of solitude concealed within a familiar landscape.
neo_gg’s Story
Photograph by neo_gg
neo_gg
📷 Panasonic LUMIX G8
📚 03
This photograph depicts the Taiwanese wedding custom known as “throwing the fan.”
As the bride departs, she throws a fan from the window, symbolizing the release of her past and her intention to become a gentle wife from that moment onward.
The bride and groom are longtime friends, and in a sense, this grand wedding was also held for the elders of their families.
My friends spent more than six months preparing, working on it after finishing their jobs each day.
Participating as a groomsman, I documented the wedding from my own unapologetically subjective perspective, driven both by anger and aversion and by the desire to do something for my friends.
The truth is, I am uncomfortable with the wedding as a “ritual.” Even so, it undeniably contained beautiful things: the bond between the couple, the radiant veil, and the bride’s determination to remain beautiful amid all the commotion.
I wanted to record everything—what I disliked and what I loved. These photographs are deeply subjective and emotional, but this was the only thing I could do. Of them all, this work is the most ironic and emotionally charged, yet also the warmest to me. I hope the couple likes it too.
cizucu Editorial Team
Although made within the celebratory setting of a wedding, this photograph carries a palpable tension. A hand extended through the window, a ring, a tightly held fan: this fleeting moment seems to contain not only the beauty of ritual but also the photographer’s own complex emotions. Rather than simply distancing himself from what he cannot embrace, he attempts to confront everything present—the beauty as well as the discomfort. It is this gaze that gives the photograph its intense emotional warmth.
In Closing
What did you think?
We want to direct attention toward qualities that cannot be fully conveyed through visuals alone. Read Your Photography is an editorial series that considers the thoughts and emotions held within a photograph, receiving them as a story in their own right.
What appears in the frame is only a fleeting moment. Yet behind it lies time that has undeniably continued to flow, alongside emotions that were never put into words.
We invite you to experience each photograph as though reading it—and as though turning the pages of a book.
How to Join
From time to time, cizucu posts a “photography theme” on Threads.
Simply reply with one of your works that speaks to the theme.
There is just one requirement: follow cizucu on social media 💙
From among the submitted works,
selected photographers will receive a message from the cizucu Editorial Team!
Read Your Photography also features works exhibited through the cizucu-hosted photo poster project (ppp).
A ppp exhibition may be taking place in your country, too. Encounters connected solely by a shared love of photography are now unfolding around the world.