2025 -

So Fake It’s Real explores 打卡 (“check-in”) photo culture in China — a phenomenon in which people photograph themselves in highly staged ways, repeating the same poses, filtered looks, and visual fantasies shaped by social media. What began as casual selfies has evolved into an industry that now defines many tourist sites throughout China, shaping how people see themselves and these places. While traveling throughout China, I was struck by this phenomenon and began participating directly in these photographs, posing and taking in commands from photographers who instruct hundreds of visitors daily and asking them to teach me the most popular poses and produce these images, often within minutes.

The resulting photographs—produced by them—form one half of the project. The other consists of my own images and video documentation, revealing the production process, repetition, and labor behind the spectacle. Together, these two bodies of work contrast two ways of seeing: one filtered, scripted, and algorithmically optimized; the other observational, reflective, and human. The project examines how photography and social media shape collective imagination and identity, transforming places into spectacle and factories for images, while also exploring the fantasies and aspirations these images reflect about life in modern China.