11/5/2025
As a London-based artistic photographer, Zesheng Li takes no haste in narrating a clear story. Instead, through fog, animals, land, and traces of faith, he constructs a series of images that hover between presence and absence, allowing viewers to slowly enter a borderline state as they observe. In his work, landscape is not a backdrop but an entity imbued with mystical density; photography ceases to be an instrument of observation, becoming instead an inward-turning exercise in contemplation.
In this era of incessant image production and rapid consumption, Zesheng Li chooses deceleration. His lens almost entirely eschews bright, definitive, or declarative scenes, instead yielding to blur, negative space, and anticipation. Fog transcends its meteorological essence, transformed by him into a visual and psychological metaphor. It becomes a conduit, guiding visible reality towards the invisible realm of the spirit, and shifting photography from “representation” towards “invocation”.
In his work I, US, THEM 1 (2022), several figures move slowly through a field shrouded in thick fog. Their identities remain ambiguous—neither portraits nor narrative characters, but rather metaphors for existence itself. Li weaves the relationships between the individual, the collective, and the other into the very fabric of his imagery. The fog blurs the contours of the figures, dissolving the boundaries between ‘self’ and ‘other,’ drawing the viewer into a spiritual landscape of belonging and alienation. Within this work, one cannot discern the figures' faces, yet senses their presence; one cannot determine their destination, while being drawn towards the depths of the image. This series allows human and landscape to permeate one another, transforming viewing into a bodily slowness.
In I, US, THEM 2 (2023), a flock of sheep traverses a mist-shrouded pasture, their formation loose but natural. Though devoid of human presence, no void is felt; lacking religious imagery, yet suffused with ritualistic solemnity. Li does neither treat animals as decorative elements within the landscape, but rather as co-creators of emotional and spiritual atmospheres: the flock's movements, pauses, lowered heads and gazes form a slow, silent chorus. Once more, the mist assumes the role of “mediator”, guiding reality towards the spiritual, the everyday towards contemplation.
Most of Li's works are images of abandoned buildings, old churches, and wilderness. Religious symbols never become the focal point; they lurk at the margins, like residual memories or traces repeatedly smoothed by time. Li does nothing to revive any particular faith but rather focuses on these symbols retaining their spiritual weight as ‘cultural echoes’.
Zesheng Li regards photography as a ‘devout practice.’ He refrains from defining ‘spirituality,’ preferring to create conditions for its perception. He allows light, air, and time to dictate composition, permitting images to develop organically. Each press of the shutter feels less like capturing reality and more like a gentle approach to it.
Zesheng Li (b. 2001) is a London-based art photographer. Through recurring motifs such as fog, animals, and traces of religious symbolism, he constructs contemplative visual spaces that blur the boundary between the visible and the invisible.
Li captures meditative encounters between the visible and the unseen, the earthly and the divine. With stillness and attentive observation, he creates contemplative images that hold space for reflection and the unseen dimensions of experience.