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This set consists of issues 1–5 of the Shanghai-based photography zine “Spark.” Each issue is dedicated to the work of a single artist. With minimal use of text, the magazine offers its artists the necessary space to speak entirely through their images. With most of the featured photographers being young and based in China, “Spark Zine” aims to provide a platform for upcoming, talented photographers to showcase their work and perspective.

Volume 1 – “Silent Zone” by Liang Shuang, 36 pages
“I’m not very good at words. Pictures are the best way for me to communicate. I don’t even want to mention photography. If I don’t mention it, it’s the most natural way to record and a way for me to keep a safe distance from life.”
― Liang Shuang

Volume 2 – “Vision II” by Hamai, 48 pages
“This group of photos focuses on some details and ordinary states of people who live in cities at present, and pays attention to some scenes with less ‘Energy’ or ‘Lens Attraction’. ‘Wishes’ initially came from the lyrics of a song called A Heart Wrenching Joke and a Long Daydream by the rock band Omnipotent Youth Society. I want this word to carry a feeling of ‘simple and dull’ - Consumerism and value boundaries delineate the trajectory of one’s life. One’s stand replaces the courage to search for the truth. Wishes collapsed to the present and became concrete. Thus, being simple and dull.”
― Hamai

Volume 3 – “Gardenia” by Gu Liyu, 40 pages
“If photos are full of randomness, it means instinctive intuition takes over motivation. Perhaps what is more concerned with is whether the series between photos needs a theme rather than the thinking at the very moment of taking a photo? However, no matter how much I think about this question, there is no right answer to it. Daily life may not need deliberate interpretations. The action of shooting photographs may not need too many explanations. What I did was just recording some of my daily fragments and sublimating them a little bit. As a creator also as an observer. I hope you could alongside me as a viewer, while these photos stand the opposite.”
― Gu Liyu

Volume 4 – “Undercurrent” by Yan Jialin, 44 pages
“When three members of my family passed away, I missed the opportunity to see them one last time. The intense regret and remorse that had endured over the years became too much for me to let it go. The instinctive response to pain is to run away from it, but perhaps facing the wound will be the only cure. It wasn’t until I started talking to friends about the loss of those three that I realised that most people, like me, avoid dealing with the pain of losing the people they loved as a way to forget its existence. Maurice Maeterlinck expressed a view about death in his The Blue Bird: There are people who have died, but as long as someone still misses them, they will live on as happily as ever. I began to visit the places where they spent the last days of their lives more frequently, talking about them more often, looking for traces of their lives, and eventually those traces and feelings that were recovered became a bond between the three of them and me. These bonds will eventually become the undercurrents of their existence in my world, flowing continuously.”
― Yan Jialin

Volume 5 – “Walking Back Along the River Bank” by Meiwen, 40 pages
“In my eyes, Suzhou River is a park with flowing water, where people of all kinds rest, smoke, and stay in a daze. They sat on benches or leaned against the stands on the bank, all staring at the flowing river. I don’t want to disturb them, neither start a chat. I recorded everything quietly when passing by. I went back and forth twice a week to the river bank during that three months, but still couldn’t figure out a name that matched the theme of the photos I took. Later, I came across a collection of poems named They Had to Walk Back Along the River Bank, written by Zhu Wen, a film director. The people he portrayed in the movies and in his writings wandered in this world, living a rough life, waiting for the arrangement of fate.When I put my camera away, I wondered if the neon night on the other side of the river could hear the whispers of these people.”
― Meiwen