The project "Romantic Memories" pays tribute to and commemorates the childhood, romance, and beautiful times of my generation. In those joyful childhood days, wildflowers bloomed in the forests of my hometown, and poetry intertwined with the fantasies of young girls to create dreams. Flowers and poems were cherished in thick books, as if living in a fairy tale world. This series of works is closely related to my personal growth experience, reflecting the rapid social changes in China during the 1980s and 1990s. During that time, the appearance of rural and urban areas underwent significant changes. The economic boom drove many young rural people to the cities, and the familiar environment changed accordingly. The small river in front of my house disappeared, and the dense forest was replaced by buildings. Now, when I return to my hometown, it is difficult to find the landscape and people from my childhood.

For our generation of Chinese people, it seems that the physical media that preserve past memories are facing challenges. Technological progress has profoundly changed our lives, but this change has not always been positive. In this fast-paced and mechanical era, we seem to be bound by "technology." Art creation has become a way for me to preserve these memories. The "Romantic Memories" series resonates emotionally with the Chinese writer and poet Mu Xin's poem "From the Past, Slowly." Mu Xin writes in his poem: "The past days became very slow, cars, horses, and mail were slow, and life was only enough to love one person." These images describe a pastoral life, contrasting sharply with the fast-paced modern life filled with "planes," "cars," "social media," "phones," and "emails." The nostalgic emotions, complex thoughts, and helplessness evoked by this poem are exactly what I strive to express in the "Romantic Memories" series. Art, like poetry, explores the essence of things and conveys the artist’s inner emotions through fictional narratives, building a bridge for communication with the outside world.

From the conception of the project to the collection of flowers, planting, drying, the entire creative process took about six months. I worked with a plant artist in London, seeking flowers from my memories based on their types, colors, and shapes, cultivating seedlings, witnessing the entire process of flowers from sprouting to blooming, and then to withering and preservation. All the photography was done with a medium format camera, using traditional film developing processes without post-production, and the tones retained the original effect of the film. This approach contrasts sharply with the modern digital, efficient creation process, aiming to reflect a deep nostalgia for a slower-paced life. "Romantic Memories" aims to capture and reflect people's longing for the past, slower, and more mindful lives, while facing the complexity of modern, technology-driven life. The delicate beauty of wildflowers and the awakening power of poetry metaphorically suggest the fleeting nature of memories and the lasting impact of our cultural and environmental heritage. The work is not only an artistic expression of personal memory but also a reflection and commemoration of cultural and environmental heritage. Through this project, I hope to guide the viewer to reconsider, in an era of rapid technological development, those once beautiful slow-living moments and their enduring echo in the depths of our hearts.