Jiayue Li’s intimate photography shines a light on Asian women emigrating to London

Perusing through journals of months and years past can bring us right back to feelings of the time, and in some cases summon a new wave of creativity. Both are particularly true for London and Shanghai-based photographer Jiayue Li, whose old diaries gave her a window into her rough start in London — fraught with intrusive neighbours, struggles to find accommodation and pursuing a degree outside of her native language — and the solace she found in her room. “Daily life outside was like a war at times, and my room was always a place for healing,” she tells us. “Reading back through my diary, images of other girls in their rooms, in a similar situation, started coming to mind,” she adds.

Jiayue’s journey doesn’t stop at introspection or nostalgia. She wants to know how Asian women who have emigrated to London are feeling now; developing from self to friends and eventually strangers. Her very personal style captures these women in a way that doesn’t strive for perfection or immediate clarity to us as viewers. Some images are of near silhouettes and in others, faces are obscured by furniture and keepsakes. But the emotions of the subjects – whether distraught, joyful or jestful – come to the forefront, allowing us to read the room. “Things have changed a lot since I started the project [in 2016], a lot of the girls I documented in the early years have moved out of those rooms. It could be the pandemic, new policies or the rental market”, she says. “When you come to a new city, your decision to stay or leave is deeply personal, but when you zoom out these choices draw a portion of history”.

Moving up and down London with her 6x6 medium frame film camera in hand, Jiayue finds her subjects on the street as much as she does Instagram. “It’s common to meet rejection, it’s something I had to get used to,” she confesses. “I focus on the main intention of the project, which is to get to know other people, their space, feelings and give them memories that they can hold on to. I realised how much Asian women are perceived as consumers instead of contributors. And my curiosity meant that I documented way more people in the art and fashion industries.” And not all of these memories have the women directly in them. The emotions are also derived from images of knick-knacks and windows with golden or blue hour light piercing through – building a world that every subject can look back on.

Over seven years, Jiayue has created intimate portraits of a community by capturing the feelings that come from “exploitation and discrimination”, as well as “being a part of a new generation engaged in contemporary cultural globalisation”. And with that, a piece of herself and her subjects can be found in every photograph, but to us the viewers, Jiayue says she is gifting us an opportunity to “see and understand as opposed to analyse and judge”.