How has your work evolved over the course of your career?
"My works are divided into three phases:

"The first is the 'visual' phase. This is when I was still in college and did a lot of post-production. It was a young, creative passion. It felt alive. Then, I got into fashion and people were concerned about my works; they were afraid that too much post-production turns the photos into portraits of fairy and demons. And then, I jumped to a minimalist stage. These works made people know my skills beyond just post-production.

"After I had the chance to shoot many celebrities, I started to work on the Chinese contemporary background series. This series is very special to me because I’m the first fashion photographer to use Chinese contemporary faces and background in mainstream fashion. China was used to copying Western or Japanese or Korean style, but this was new — and easy to fail at. But I knew I could do it. China should not repeat its ancient art over and over again. I wanted to show how contemporary Chinese art can be. This group of photos — the most famous one with Lu Yan on the Great Wall — represented the first time that a mainstream fashion magazine portfolio was shot on the Great Wall. It was quite a sensation.

"The third phase of my works is based on Chinese culture interpreted through techniques. The two offer a visual combination of contemporary, international aesthetics and local, cultural sensibilities."

Photographed by Chen Man