Interview: Bing Lu

Bing Lu

i took the lead and made you bleed, 2024

Archival print

Each 15 x 19 in. | 38.1 x 48.26 cm

1) Who are you, and where did you study photography? Where are you based now?

A. My name is Bing Lu, born and raised in Beijing. I moved to the States when I was 12. I went to high school in Pennsylvania where I had my first photography lesson shooting black-and-white on 120mm. In 2018, I moved to Boston for college, where I was formally trained as a photographer, and I’ve been doing it since. Now I live and work in New York City.

2) What draws you to the medium format (a type of camera with a large film or sensor size) as a photographer?

A. My camera is a Fujifilm GW690II medium format, shooting black and white on 120mm film with about eight shots per roll. I love that it’s portable and simply built, with a fixed lens that makes the mechanics easy for me to understand. I’m not very technical, so that simplicity makes it feel approachable.

Bing Lu

Untitled (red), 2024

Inkjet print

20 x 30 in | 50.8 x 76.2 cm

3) What are your primary formal concerns, and how do you prioritize those needs in the context of your ideation process?

A. I start by responding to what I see and how I feel—a color, shape, texture, material, or size usually comes before the object itself. I make something, and keep observing over time. I make variations of the same subject at different stages, treating them as trails until I can see how they relate to each other. Only then do I know what works and what doesn’t. I enjoy letting my images evolve naturally as I move with them.

4) What are the ideas that you deal with through photography? How do you differentiate between reality and fiction? What is real in photography? What is fictional? Are they always in opposition with one another, or can they coincide? If so, how?

A. Time—how we perceive the present, reinterpret the history, and imagine the future. As I understand it, it isn’t strictly linear or constant. We experience life subjectively, noticing change and progress in our own ways. I think it's fascinating to use photography as a way of engaging with it.

Reality, or what’s “real” or “true,” is subjective. It’s relative and can shift depending on perspective. For instance, many images I've done involve a sort of chance, accidents, or surprises. Things I could never have predicted. Part of the domain of photography, and of my life, is available in principle, and I don’t really rule anything out. The constant I find is they are always substantial.

Bing Lu

Untitled (yellow), 2024

Inkjet print

20 x 30 in | 50.8 x 76.2 cm

5) Are you influenced by contemporary painting and drawing as well? For example, Robert Rauschenberg collaged and modified photographs onto paintings and assemblages. Post-minimalist artist Eva Hesse also made photograms by placing objects in front of the camera and exposing them to light. Your abstract compositions with lines may be suggestive of certain variants of abstract expressionism (e.g. Barnett Newman). Lynton Wells's earlier works from the 1970s of painted photographs, which traverse between fiction and reality, also come to mind.

A. Yes, especially in terms of mark-making. I think of Cy Twombly’s gestural strokes on canvas, Robert Motherwell’s use of automatism. They inspire me to utilize formal elements in ways that engage with presence. There’s often chance and unpredictability in the process to play with too.

I enjoy working with the most basic components. Everything happens on a flat surface, those marks can still create a sense of depth and dimension. I’m very drawn to that limitation, so to the flatness of photographic paper. I like finding ways to work around it. Some see minimalism in my work but I think of the simplicity more as illusion, spontaneity, personal gesture, and emotional intensity. Those are qualities that minimalism fundamentally rejects.

Bing Lu

tainted, 2024

Archival print

Each 11 x 13 in. | 27.94 x 33.02 cm

6) How does the history of photography influence your work? Who do you revere as your mentors and partners in the dueling arena of photography? For example, some of your ghostly, abstracted images may remind people of Idris Khan, while others are similarly positioned and expressed as Thomas Demand's works.

A. The modern Pictorial Photography period began with Alfred Stieglitz, whose Equivalent series took the medium beyond literal documentation, introducing abstraction and emphasizing formal qualities for personal expression, much like painting. Later, Minor White, Aaron Siskind, and Henry Callahan, who defined abstract expressionist photography in mid-20th century America, explored abstraction in the real world, working with perspective, scale, and contrast while using process-based or technological disruption to alter perception. Barbara Kasten extended this approach by physically building abstraction in tangible space, known as synthetic abstraction. The image becomes both real and artificial. This idea resonates with me when I make photographs that flatten content into pixels or data, presenting it as a simulation and fundamentally shaping how we perceive the world around us. Contemporary photographer Eileen Quinlan reexamined traditional darkroom methods through chemical and surface interventions. The process is highly experimental and unpredictable. I see this evolution of preservation is disruption, and each image can emerge continuously through the process. They all come together for me in a process of experimentation, working with a flat surface while generating depth, balancing chance and control, stretching the medium’s paradoxical nature.

7) How do you expose your sense of otherness in the western society and your own Chinese identity through your photography? Does your cultural origin make a difference in how you perceive the world around you? For example, do you conceptualize your abstract lines as originating from Chinese calligraphy? How about your perspective as a woman photographer? Is it important or not? If yes, do you align your work with the feminist movement or thought?

A. I think everyone is an “other” to someone else. It’s inevitable, and it shifts depending on where we are. Living abroad from a young age has shaped how I see things. My Chinese roots are a crucial part of me, but they don’t fully define me or my photography. Frankly, I think they constantly adapt and reform to contextual limitations and circumstances.

Photography is a Western-invented medium, and I learned it mostly through a Western framework. When I make an image that feels connected to myself, I need to give in the personal. Like you mentioned, Chinese calligraphy and symbolism are my blessings that guide my line-making, and the philosophy of yin and yang informs how I think about balance, composition, and color. I’m aware that race and gender can place a certain weight in the visual landscape. I don’t make work about them, but I don’t shy away from them either. I think what we make is always both personal and collective. When those themes appear and are done right, they do so organically rather than as a statement through the work.

I do not explicitly align with my work with the feminist movement. But I have deep respect for the contributions of women artists, many of whom were historically overlooked. Hilma af Klint was making abstract, symbolically rich paintings years before Wassily Kandinsky, who is often credited as the father of abstraction. Performance and video artist Joan Jonas also showed the unforgiven nature and resilience of being a maker by confronting her own female body with mechanized tools.

Bing Lu

Carter, New York, 2024

Archival print

20 x 24 in | 50.8 x 60.96 cm

8) Do you frequent the dark room and utilize film photography, or do you mainly use digital processes? Do you value the labor, time, and the analog experience with film, or do you prefer the convenience and the high definition of digital?

A. I work with film and process my images in the darkroom. In recent years I’ve begun incorporating digital manipulations into my analog making. Since I digitize and archive my negatives, most of the time, I look at my images on a screen, through pixels and data rather than as physical prints. At some point I thought that I wasn’t really looking at the original photograph anymore, but at a simulation of it. That idea has stayed with me. I wanted to visualize the tension between the tangible and the virtual in photography. The world we live in now is always moving at a fast pace. The slow, time-consuming process of film really calms me down and helps me think. It fits my rhythm. I also like having a sense of control. Yet, film gives me the freedom to let things stretch and unfold. I love that the outcome is always unpredictable. There’s no quick fix and no guarantees. A negative is also a reflection of everything I put into it: my gesture, decision, mistake, and hesitation. All of it shows up in the image, and there’s no magic eraser or “undo” button. The only way forward is to work with what’s there.

9) How do your portrait photos fit in with your more abstract and conceptual photo series? Is there a continuity between the two realms of your work?

A. I’d say they’re connected. Both are about how we see and understand. In my portraits of strangers, I look for human connection in fleeting moments, knowing a photograph can never fully define someone. With my abstract series, I turn inward into my emotional reality. In both, I’m stretching imagination, perception, limitation, and ambiguity, thinking how much a photograph is able to reveal and conceal.

Bing Lu

Untitled, Boston, 2021

Archival print

20 x 24 in | 50.8 x 60.96 cm

10) Where do you see yourself going from here? What are your goals and dreams? Where do you want to be in the next five to ten years?

A. Ever since I left school, it’s been harder to stay consistent in the lab and practice with different techniques. I’ve always valued the technical side of a medium. I try to stick to those routines, also as a way to push myself creatively. I started a new personal project some time ago, and I’m excited to see where it leads. I aim to have the main part completed by the end of 2025.

My goal is to maintain a sustainable workflow that allows me to keep growing while staying true to my vision. I hope to be recognized for my work, not on a large scale, but in ways that matter to me and my community.

About Bing Lu:

Bing Lu (Maggie) (b.1999) is a Chinese photographer currently based in New York City. She earned her BFA in Photography from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2022, and her MFA in Photography, Video, and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts in 2024.

Lu’s first long-term photographic series, Unconditional (2019–), documents encounters with strangers on the streets of Boston during the COVID-19 pandemic—a time when human connection was both deeply uncertain and profoundly essential. Through her intimate portraits, the series explores the quiet resilience of everyday people and the enduring need for empathy in moments of isolation.

After moving to New York City, Lu expanded her practice into analog photography and alternative processes, reinterpreting traditional methods through a contemporary lens. Her abstract series, tough (2023) and like this, like that, I'm starting to crack (2024) mark a significant turning point in her image-making. Exploring alternative ways of perceiving nature through abstraction and imagination, these works document a process of imaginative revision, an inquiry into how images shape, distort, and reconstruct our idea of reality in an age of constant visual information.

Lu’s photographs offer a sense of solitude and quietness among the ever-complex digital age. The ambiguity within those images once again raises the question — where do imagery align in the current culture of visual landscape, when much or little the image is able to reveal or conceal.

Artist Website

https://binglu.squarespace.com/

Artist Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/lbm128_photo/