Li Hui takes blurred pictures and clear photographs of herself and others. I recently asked her some questions about her work, filling in the gaps, personality traits and privacy. Follow the link below for words and pictures.
-One of the obvious traits about your pictures is how you never show peoples faces. Is this for the audience to make up the rest of the person or to take away that element of focus from the viewer?
My pictures never shows faces because I think this is a way of communicating with the viewer. The pictures remind us of our common feelings, secrets, past memories or magical dreams. The people in my pictures are not supposed to be unknown faces, but the viewer him- or herself.
-You said on your website that since 2009 you've started taking photography 'seriously' - what has that entailed so far?
In the past I spent too much time at home watching movies or listening to records or just sleeping all the time, so obviously I didn't really have enough time to go outside, take pictures and actually be serious about it. I think that changed in February 2009, as I started to really focus on photography.
-You've talked in interviews about how you're quite a shy/solitary person, do you feel this comes across in your photography?
I think shy people take pictures in a different way and approach subjects differently.
-Do other photographers influence your work or does inspiration come from closer to home?
I don't even know that many photographers, I'm pretty sure you know a whole lot more than I do. That's not really important to me, I draw most of my inspiration from movies. If I'm not taking pictures, I have to watch movies. This is a habit I've kept ever since I was a little girl. I lived with my grandfather and he was a big movie fan.
-You're pretty reserved about the information you give out to the internet, do you think that people give away too much online?
Yeah, I'm into photography because it's my hobby. I think that information is not necessary. Giving away such details doesn't help me in any way and it doesn't improve my photos.
Recently I got a mail from an ezine and they said they prefer people to focus on photographs instead of the person behind the camera. I totally agree with that.
Li can be found online at flickr and huiuh.com
