Unfinished Lands

2025

4×5 large-format color film photography

Project Statement

From January to May 2025, I photographed unfinished, stalled, and nonfunctional development sites in Tianjin, Zhengzhou, Nanchang, Wuhan, Changsha, Chongqing, and Guiyang. My subjects included high-rise housing, commercial complexes, cultural tourism developments, and hillside villas. Although scattered across different cities, these places repeatedly presented buildings, land, and public spaces left in suspension.

I photographed these sites on 4×5 large-format color film. The images generally preserve the relationships between buildings and the surrounding roads, vegetation, mountains, housing, or city skyline. Unfinished structures remain within the everyday urban environment; some developments have lost their intended function even though they appear nearly complete.

These developments once held expectations of modern living, wealth, and the city’s future. When construction stalled or their intended use failed, the buildings and land bore lasting, visible consequences. Interrupted residential developments also involved homebuyers’ unfulfilled expectations of a place to live and their actual losses. Unfinished Lands examines promises of development driven by capital and who bears the cost when development is interrupted.