LE BOOK sits with Han Yang

For photographer and creative director Han Yang, the body is never simply a body. It is a site of transformation, contradiction and possibility a place where identity, technology, nature and culture continually meet.

PHOTOGRAPHY AS A WINDOW AND MIRROR

Photography, for Han Yang, begins with a contradiction. It is both a way of looking at the world and a way of looking back at oneself. “For me, photography is both a window and a mirror,” she says. Through the window, she encounters the many identities that exist beyond her own experience; through the mirror, those encounters inevitably turn inward. Photography does not simply document who we are. It becomes part of the process through which we understand who we might become.

This idea of identity as something unfinished sits at the centre of Yang’s practice. Her photographs frequently place the human body in unfamiliar territory intertwined with organic matter, artificial structures, technology and nonhuman forms. But the transformation is never simply aesthetic. Beneath the surreal surfaces lies a deeper question: what happens when we stop treating the human body as a fixed and definitive boundary?

“What interests me most is the possibility of the body remaining in a continuous process of becoming, rather than arriving at a final or fixed form.”

BEYOND THE HUMAN

Her approach is informed by posthuman thought, but it is also rooted in a broader questioning of the hierarchy that places humanity at the centre of everything. Throughout history, humans have imagined ways to transcend the limitations of the body, from mythology and superhuman fantasies to aviation, space exploration, biotechnology and artificial intelligence. Technology has progressively transformed those fantasies into material possibilities.

Yet she is less interested in imagining a more powerful human than in questioning the very idea of human supremacy. “The body is central to my photographic practice, but the nonhuman subjects that appear alongside it are equally important,” she explains. Organic, technological and artificial forms are not simply accessories to the human figure. They challenge its position at the centre.

“The body, then, becomes less like a boundary separating the self from the world and more like a point within a constantly changing network of relationships.”

CONTROL, VULNERABILITY, INSTINCT

That sense of instability is reflected in the physical construction of Yang’s images. Her photographs can feel meticulously controlled precise lighting, deliberate composition, carefully considered gestures  while the bodies within them appear vulnerable, exposed or on the verge of transformation.

The tension is intentional.

“I am not trying to achieve absolute control,” she says. “I prefer to build a very precise framework and then consciously allow something uncontrollable to happen within it.”

It is a philosophy that extends beyond her photographic process. She describes herself as someone who can be almost obsessive about consistency in everyday life, while remaining instinctive and unpredictable in the studio. Structure and spontaneity are not opposing forces in her practice; they need each other.

Perhaps that is why vulnerability feels so present in her work. A controlled image can contain a body that refuses to feel completely secure. A carefully constructed world can still leave room for uncertainty.

THE RIGHT TO REMAIN UNSEEN

That uncertainty also informs the way Yang approaches visibility. At a moment when images circulate more rapidly than ever, being seen can appear almost synonymous with being represented. But Yang questions whether visibility necessarily means recognition.

“Being seen does not necessarily mean being understood.”

For her, true visibility is not about exposing every aspect of a person. Nor does it mean that a photographer has the authority to define another person through an image. Instead, photography can create the conditions for someone to appear without being reduced to a category, a label or a predetermined narrative.

“Perhaps being seen is not about revealing everything at all. It may be about leaving enough space for a person to remain complex, contradictory and impossible to reduce to a single image or definition.”

It is a particularly revealing approach to portraiture: the image does not need to explain everything. Concealment, fragmentation and transformation can sometimes say more than total revelation.

FASHION AS TRANSFORMATION

Fashion, naturally, becomes another territory for this exploration. She sees clothing, jewellery, make-up and styling not as elements placed onto an already defined body, but as forces capable of changing the way that body exists and is read.

“Fashion photography does not have to tell us what a body should look like. It can create a space to imagine what else a body, and an identity, could be.”

A CULTURAL UNDERCURRENT

This possibility of imagining otherwise extends to Yang’s relationship with Chinese culture. Its influence does not necessarily appear through recognisable symbols, but through a way of understanding nature, contradiction and the relationship between the individual and the world.

Ideas of yin and yang, cycles, emptiness, restraint, death and rebirth have become embedded in her visual language. So too has the traditional Chinese relationship with landscape, where nature is not merely a backdrop but a vessel for emotion and memory.

“The Chinese references in my work therefore do not always appear as recognisable symbols. Sometimes they are visible; more often, they exist underneath the image.”

THE BEAUTY OF IMPERMANENCE

Nature itself becomes a recurring teacher. Yang is drawn to the way it refuses the categories humans impose upon it. Growth and decay, beauty and ugliness, life and death are not necessarily opposites but parts of the same continuous cycle.

“Impermanence does not make something less meaningful; sometimes it is precisely what gives it meaning.”

There is a quiet paradox here. Photography attempts to hold a moment still, while nature constantly reminds us that nothing stays still. Yang finds beauty in that contradiction.

WHEN THE IDEA CHOOSES THE MEDIUM

Her practice also moves freely between analogue photography, digital processes, 3D and AI. But technology is never the starting point. “The idea always comes before the medium.” Analogue remains important for its physicality, its imperfections and its unpredictability, while 3D and AI can open spaces that do not yet exist in the physical world.

As AI increasingly complicates our understanding of authorship and photographic truth, Yang remains interested in what happens when an image has a physical relationship to an encounter. For her, the power of analogue photography is not necessarily that it proves something is “real”, but that it preserves a trace of presence.

“A photograph also carries everything surrounding that encounter: the relationship between photographer and subject, time spent together, gestures, accidents, imperfections and the unpredictability of the material itself.”

PHOTOGRAPHY AFTER TRUTH

Perhaps, then, photography’s future does not depend on its ability to prove reality. Perhaps its power lies elsewhere: in the memory of an encounter, in the evidence that something or someone was once present.

For her, unresolved questions are a natural part of an artistic practice that continues to evolve. Her work does not attempt to arrive at a final definition of the body, identity or even photography itself. Instead, it keeps opening those questions further.

“Every time I complete a project, I seem to discover more questions rather than fewer.”

THE FREEDOM TO REMAIN UNFINISHED

And this is the most fitting way to understand her practice. The body is not an answer. Identity is not a destination. The image is not a conclusion. It is a point of departure.

“What matters is not where transformation ends, but the fact that it can continue.”

The most radical thing about Han Yang’s work is that it refuses to give the body a final form. Her figures mutate, conceal themselves, merge with other species, dissolve into technology and return to something almost primordial. They are never quite finished  and that is precisely the point.

In a culture obsessed with definition, categorisation and visibility, she makes room for ambiguity. Her images do not ask us to decide what a body is, what an identity should look like, or where the human ends. They leave those questions open. The future of the body, in Yang’s work, is not a perfected version of what we already know. It is the freedom to remain unfinished. To photograph the body is not to capture what it is. It is to imagine what it might become.