No Life From Life is a photographic project that documents trees that have succumbed to both natural forces and human intervention. Traveling across various locations in Victoria without a fixed destination, I searched for these silent remains—traces of life now interrupted. Using a Mamiya 7 II medium format film camera and 120 film, I aimed to capture each subject with clarity and depth, allowing the detail-rich negatives to convey the quiet complexity of each scene.
This work explores the delicate, often ambiguous relationship between humans and the natural world—a relationship that may be symbiotic, but also deeply entangled and destructive. These dead trees, photographed with intention and stillness, stand as both witnesses and victims of our presence. Their forms evoke not only ecological vulnerability but also philosophical questions about the impermanence of life, the consequences of our actions, and the meaning of existence within a disrupted environment.
This work explores the delicate, often ambiguous relationship between humans and the natural world—a relationship that may be symbiotic, but also deeply entangled and destructive. These dead trees, photographed with intention and stillness, stand as both witnesses and victims of our presence. Their forms evoke not only ecological vulnerability but also philosophical questions about the impermanence of life, the consequences of our actions, and the meaning of existence within a disrupted environment.
NOW I SEE LIGHT is a slide projection installation exploring memory, analogue photography, landscape, and personal experience through the material language of film.
Developed from my previous project No Life From Life, this work expands beyond ecological subject matter and moves toward a more personal reflection on memory, belonging, and life after moving to Melbourne. Through film photography, I document friendships, everyday moments, urban spaces, and experiences that shape my understanding of place and time. Alongside these personal photographs, trees remain within the work as traces of growth, change, absence, and memory.
Working extensively with analogue photography and film processing has shaped my relationship to photographic material and history. As photography increasingly becomes digital, I became interested in revisiting an earlier photographic language: slide projection.
Using a Rollei slide projector, images are presented not as fixed objects, but as light passing through film itself. Projection transforms photography into a temporal experience—something that appears, disappears, and exists briefly within space.
NOW I SEE LIGHT considers photography as memory, process, and encounter, bringing together analogue practice, personal history, and everyday life through projection and light.
Developed from my previous project No Life From Life, this work expands beyond ecological subject matter and moves toward a more personal reflection on memory, belonging, and life after moving to Melbourne. Through film photography, I document friendships, everyday moments, urban spaces, and experiences that shape my understanding of place and time. Alongside these personal photographs, trees remain within the work as traces of growth, change, absence, and memory.
Working extensively with analogue photography and film processing has shaped my relationship to photographic material and history. As photography increasingly becomes digital, I became interested in revisiting an earlier photographic language: slide projection.
Using a Rollei slide projector, images are presented not as fixed objects, but as light passing through film itself. Projection transforms photography into a temporal experience—something that appears, disappears, and exists briefly within space.
NOW I SEE LIGHT considers photography as memory, process, and encounter, bringing together analogue practice, personal history, and everyday life through projection and light.
Profile
info@chenseven.com
Instagram: seven_chen17
Education
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
Bachelor of Photograpgy (2026)