# Project Description Deconstructing Intimacy Shiwei Tu Summary Final work Shiwei Tu is a London-based Chinese photographer. After earning a BA in Fine Arts from UNSW, she moved to London to pursue an MA in Photography at the University of the Arts London. Working at the intersection of feminism, emotion, and self-expression, Tu moves between Chinese and Western cultural frames, challenging familiar scripts of the self and feeling in the Chinese context and proposing more elastic, self-determined ways of seeing. Shiwei Tu is a London-based Chinese photographer. After earning a BA in Fine Arts from UNSW... College London College of Communication Course MA Photography Graduation year 2025 This work focuses on intimacy within a long-distance relationship, exploring how emotions shift between presence and absence, leaving traces of touch and memory. It reflects on how love endures and transforms when physical connection is limited by distance. Inspired by personal experience and informed by ideas of individualisation and the fluidity of intimacy in contemporary Chinese society, the work contemplates the negotiation between love and self. Through photography, these transitions become quiet images revealing the subtle changes of distance and affection. The work consists of thirty photographs forming an intimate diary. The camera follows the folds of the bed, where traces of touch become metaphors for emotion. As natural light moves across the sheets, the old camera lends the images a soft, memory-like blur. Printed at a modest scale, the photographs invite close viewing and calm intimacy rather than visual dominance. Their sequence breaks from chronology, echoing the rhythm of a relationship where unspoken feelings surface through the folds. I often observe myself, and who I become within intimacy, in order to understand how emotions and boundaries shift through love. Photography becomes a way to translate these observations into visible form, turning personal experiences into quiet expressions. Yet individual feelings are never isolated—they move with the changes of society. As society transforms, so does our understanding of intimacy. Making private emotions visible is both a personal act of openness and a response to the evolving state of individuality and intimacy in contemporary China. Final work Deconstructing Intimacy The work is composed as a 4×9 grid. Photographs of physical touch are rhythmically threaded through images of beds and folds. Visually, softness and blank space echo one another; narratively, shifts between presence and absence are compressed into a single plane, creating a cadence of intimacy—breaths, pauses and reverberations. Share this project This work focuses on intimacy within a long-distance relationship, exploring how emotions shift between presence and absence, leaving traces of touch and memory. It reflects on how love endures and transforms when physical connection is limited by distance. Inspired by persona... A link to this page has been added to your clipboard Browse related work Body Identity Body Photography