Jennifer Qu is a photographer born in China and raised in Canada. Her work with both digital and film photography explores themes related to the Chinese Canadian diaspora, her cultural heritage, and the documentation of others as a means of storytelling. Qu is a student at TMU in Photography Studies, works at Artspace Gallery to help install work and fundraise to support racialized artists, and is involved with Function Magazine, the student-run publication affiliated with the School of Image Arts at TMU. She is extremely passionate about working with artists in order to bring their dreams to fruition, and is excited about exhibiting work in print, online, and gallery contexts. Her work in curation aims to amplify emerging artists’ voices and perspectives. She has explored a variety of photography styles, from editorial and commercial to intimate and personal. Graduating soon and continuing to take on photography gigs, Qu lives in Toronto with her two cats, XiaoHue and Bagheera.

 

Her recent collection, Dear, grapples with her experiences navigating the relationship between her cultural heritage and the country where she grew up. The project is a series of images coupled with envelopes addressed to family members in China. Having grown tired and restless trying to navigate her cultural and racial identity as a young person in Canada, Dear, is a long-overdue homage to the key parts of herself that she has slowly learned to embrace and be proud of. She highlights the idea that the rips and creases in the scanned photographs reflect the years she’s spent suppressing and defacing her culture, folding her history into her pockets. Although the images are scratched and bruised, the essence of the subject is still captured; similarly, no matter how much she tried to avoid her Chinese heritage, she could not, because it is the essence of who she is. 

 

Christina McCallum spoke with Qu about her work in photography, her process creating Dear, and how her art has impacted her relationship with herself.

 

CM: How and when did you get into photography? What was it about the medium that drew you to pursue it?

 

JQ: I started taking photography seriously in high school. My camera was the first thing I saved up for, and I realized my love for taking pictures was unparalleled to any other hobby I’ve picked up over the years. I would go downtown, photographing everything I could get my hands on for years before applying to the Photography Studies program at TMU. I loved everything about the medium. I loved its versatility, how it’s a way for us to capture memories, a tool for science, and an essential element to selling products and services. It was a way for people to express themselves, tell stories, and create fabricated realities for better and for worse. At the time and still, to this day, I saw photography as limitless. 

 

CM: Walk us through your artistic process. How do you come up with an idea for a project? How do you transform your vision into a final collection?

 

JQ: When we were all stuck at home during the pandemic, it gave me a moment to reflect on my surroundings. I took so many things for granted, which I never realized after moving out for university. The morning teas, homemade dumplings, and little accents inside my home were representations of my Chinese heritage. My parents were always so proud to be Chinese, and as much as they tried to engrain that in me, ultimately, I had to learn my own reasons to be proud. I began documenting everything I loved that represented my culture.

 

In my third year of undergrad, we were encouraged to experiment and try new things. So I thought, “Why not crumple some images and scan them to see how they’d turn out?” The idea seemed relatively simple in theory, but technically, there was a lot of learning to be done. I didn’t want to crumple the images solely for aesthetic purposes. Everything I did to manipulate the photos had to have a purpose. 

 

CM: Tell us about your collection, Dear,.

 

JQ: Dear, is one of the most critical and intimate projects I’ve ever done. Growing up, I didn’t have the best relationship with my personal heritage. At one point, I was even ashamed to be Chinese and thought it was embarrassing. Crumpling the images to me symbolized the countless times I’ve looked away and pushed aside my culture. It was an aspect of myself that I didn’t care about and thought could be disposable. After a really long time, I came back to my culture, unraveled the photographs, and finally appreciated the beauty of it. This was not an easy task; it took years and so many trips back to China for me to unlearn what Western media has preached about my culture. 

 

I did this project during a really challenging time for Asians living everywhere. For months, a new headline would come out every day stating someone in the community was assaulted or harassed or worse. I had no tolerance for it, and I refused to let anybody else make me feel less than because of who I am and what I look like. That is what Dear, truly means to me. It is me finally standing up for myself and everyone else in the community. What we have is beautiful and should be celebrated rather than shamed. 

 

CM: What I admire about Dear, is the intimacy over long distances that you build with the letters addressed to your relatives in China. Can you talk a bit about how you use your art as a space to explore identity, loss, and connection?

 

JQ: A lot of my personal work has to do with growing up as an immigrant in Canada. The 1.5 generation never feels accepted in either community — Canadian or Chinese — leading to so much confusion and disconnect from both sides. The whole process of creating Dear, was therapeutic in a sense because it’s such a candid reflection of my feelings. My heart hurt when I was crumpling and creasing my prints on purpose. Typically, I’d be using gloves, protecting them in plastic sheets, and there I was crushing these gorgeous prints between my fingers. I had no idea that that is also precisely what I’ve been doing to my personal heritage over the years. 

 

My mother also has an extensive collection of stamps from her childhood in China. These are the stamps on my envelopes. She’s been collecting them for over four decades now, and they also hold so much meaning for our family. She used these stamps to send and receive letters from when she was a child. For her, it always signified the relationships in her life. Loved ones update each other and share the most important moments in their life. It was a full-circle moment when I used those same stamps for this project to share my life in Canada with my family back home. 

 

CM: How has your work with photography influenced or altered the way you see the world? 

 

JQ: Images are so heavily intertwined with media, and sometimes, I’m unsure if we can distinguish the differences between looking at scrollings images on our phones and looking at art that should be appreciated. In so many ways, photography and social media have overwhelmed our senses, making it hard to cherish anything. Yet it is also a medium many people use to treasure a memory and take it with them forever. The fine line between photographing a treasured memory to cherish forever and sending your photos to the abyss of overwhelmingly banal content we are bombarded with every day is a constant struggle of mine.

Check out Jennifer’s photography here!