ChenXueling

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Exception Holiday

2019-2021








Exception Holiday is a photographic series created during my time living nomadically across different cities. It captures a group of Gen Z friends suspended in a transitional phase—after finishing school but not yet fully stepping into adult life. This in-between state feels like a temporary exception granted by life itself: a period of drifting, freedom, emotional intensity, and quiet exploration.

Using a pocket-sized CCD camera, I documented fleeting moments—mountains and waterfalls, night rivers, restless gazes—fragmented traces of a life stage that has no clear name. The images are lo-fi, pixelated, and heavy with grain—like pages from an unpolished visual diary, both fragile and vividly alive.

The Chinese title “例外假期” (Exception Holiday) also echoes the word for menstruation (“例假”), referencing a kind of cyclical pause. Just as the body allows itself rest during a period, this work creates a visual space of collective pause—an attempt to capture how young people recover rhythm in the midst of uncertainty.