“Could a photograph be made the way a painting is created, not to reproduce, but to interpret?”
Born in Beijing, Reborn in Light: A Journey from Childhood Lens to Emotional Landscapes
From early moments spent behind a camera in Beijing to immersive walks through the storied landscapes of France, Fan Li’s photographic language emerges from a life uniquely straddling two cultural spheres. Raised by a father who was a professional photojournalist, Li was introduced to the mechanics and magic of photography as a child, treating the camera more as a plaything than a tool. This early bond developed into a profound sensitivity for observation, intuition, and emotional presence within his work. His move to France introduced him to a different artistic heritage, steeped in the legacy of Impressionism and the poetry of light.
Now based in France, Li crafts evocative imagery that captures not what is plainly visible, but what lingers just beneath — sensations, moods, and ephemeral moments. His method, established in 2018, challenges traditional photographic boundaries by blending instinct with precision, forgoing digital manipulation to create painterly compositions in-camera. He draws heavily from Impressionist aesthetics, employing light and movement as expressive tools rather than technical effects. His bicultural identity becomes the connective thread in his practice, enabling a fusion of Eastern sensibility with Western art history, resulting in work that is quiet, radiant, and emotionally textured.
Li’s body of work has found a home in French galleries and cultural institutions, gaining recognition for its emotional resonance and technical ingenuity. His exhibitions invite viewers into a space of reflection and awe, gently urging them to pause and perceive the quiet intensity of fleeting moments. In every image, he seeks to rekindle the childlike wonder he first felt holding a camera, asking viewers to see not only the landscape before them but the feeling it leaves behind.
Fan Li: An Artist Born of Silence and Motion
Fan Li’s evolution into an artist was not marked by a singular decision but shaped through introspection and questioning. Early in his journey, he imposed a rigorous internal discipline: if an image could be replicated by someone else — even his father — it was not worth capturing. This refusal to settle for the generic became a crucible for his artistic voice, pushing him to pursue photographs that are inextricably tied to his personal experience and emotional truth.
A pivotal moment arrived in 2017 during a solitary walk through the Domaine de Saint-Cloud. Standing before a tree that stirred memories of a Renoir painting, Li questioned the very nature of photography. What if, instead of recording reality, a photograph could interpret it? This inquiry sparked a year of dedicated experimentation, which eventually led him to develop a technique that allows him to infuse images with movement, emotion, and atmosphere — all in-camera. His work now softens the boundaries between photography and painting, focusing less on realism and more on sensation, echoing the brushstrokes and light-play of the Impressionists.
Themes of memory, impermanence, and inner reflection form the core of Li’s creative universe. His images often depict nature as a mirror to the human psyche, evoking both stillness and transformation. By navigating the line between abstraction and narrative, his photographs speak to universal emotions while remaining deeply personal. They resonate not only as visual experiences but as emotional landscapes, shaped by intuition and guided by a quiet but insistent vision.
Between Two Landscapes: Poetic Connections Across Borders
Travel serves as both catalyst and compass in Fan Li’s creative process. His journeys, whether long expeditions or brief excursions near home, are not mere physical movements but emotional explorations. In unfamiliar settings, he finds clarity and connection, engaging in a subtle, ongoing dialogue with the world around him. The interaction with shifting light, changing seasons, and unexpected encounters often brings forward the emotional charge he seeks in his photography.
Li’s rhythm of work is shaped by patience. He revisits locations repeatedly, sometimes for months or even years, observing their transformations through seasonal changes or slight shifts in weather and light. This practice allows him to develop not just a deeper visual understanding but a personal relationship with each place he photographs. His images are born not from chance but from a sustained attentiveness, rooted in the belief that some feelings and atmospheres can only be revealed with time.
Currently, Li is preparing for a project that reaches into the heart of his bicultural experience. He aims to visually connect landscapes in China and France, places that have shaped him both personally and artistically. In these distant yet somehow related scenes, he discovers emotional parallels — echoes of one another across continents. Through this work, he intends to express the invisible thread linking his two homes, offering viewers a new way to perceive geographical and cultural proximity through feeling, light, and shared poetic memory.
Fan Li: Light, Memory, and the Birth of an Artistic Voice
Among the many images Fan Li has created, “La forêt de chênes” holds a singular place in his artistic journey. Captured in the Domaine de Saint-Cloud, the photograph was one of the first created after he formalized his impressionistic style, following a demanding year of trial and error. Though he acknowledges the possibility of rendering a technically superior image today, this work remains a personal landmark, symbolizing the moment he finally translated vision into form.
The image embodies everything Li seeks in his photography: movement rendered as softness, light painted like brushstrokes, and an atmosphere thick with emotion and ambiguity. It is more than a picture of a forest; it is a visual echo of the question that once ignited his transformation — can a photograph interpret, rather than simply reproduce? In “La forêt de chênes,” that question finds a resounding, heartfelt answer.
This image marked the true birth of Li’s visual language, one that moves beyond documentation into the terrain of emotional resonance. His continued work builds on that foundation, deepening his exploration of how photographic techniques can suggest, rather than define, and evoke rather than explain. “La forêt de chênes” stands not just as a memory, but as a compass guiding the direction of his future projects, each rooted in the quiet pursuit of beauty, sincerity, and depth.
