In 2017, Lin Shu started working on the “Pagoda” series. It was all very sudden, as if the inspiration came to him instantly, consequently he realized that the topic deserved in-depth research. The process of photographing pagodas means reconsidering and rediscovering photography. In Lin Shu photographic pursuit, he gradually slides into abstraction and emptiness but the pagoda pulls him back to the real world.
“Photographing these pagodas brought me back to material concerns - letting go of records, maintaining contact with reality, and having a curiosity about the world. Discovering the world is photography's most valuable purpose, and recording these discoveries is photography's intrinsic quality. It also evokes the dawn of photography when amateurs full of dreams and enthusiasm recorded every corner of the world. Like them, I want to cast a pure and clumsy gaze at the pagodas, a gaze out of place and outside of time.” ——Lin Shu
