EAW Pink Team 2010 - Lung Liu

My name is Lung and I am a self-taught documentary/portrait/landscape/etc... photographer. I have been photographing for a few years now, but haven't been able to figure out how to actually survive off it, or even get enough of a return to pay off the film costs, but I'm still trying to live the dream. I've done well in PX3, International Photography Awards, PhotoLife Image International, and a few others as well as exhibited in Festivals such as Foto Freo, La Bodega, and soon at the Angkor Wat Photography Festival. Not many galleries on my resume, though. Some of my work can be seen here:

lungliu.com
lungliu.photoshelter.com

I recently spent a week at the 2010 Burning Man Festival and undergone an intense personal experience. As part of introducing ourselves, I think I will share part of this photoessay instead of something more technically impressive, but less about me.

Kill Your Darlings

The underlying foundations of my work have always dealt with loneliness, how it affects us and how we respond to it. It is the one theme that is present in everything that I have done.

Beauty makes me lonely and the isolation of the dust storms relieves it, but there always exists an overwhelming sense of sadness throughout my experience at Burning Man. I was forlorn and shyer than default.

It wasn't until my campmate, Chris, told us to kill our darlings that I understood the importance of the tenth principle of Immediacy. It has become the singular most important principle to me and how I view and experience life. This is our time - it will not come again. Touch now before waiting for a kiss. Kiss now before waiting for something that will never come. Kill your darlings and find out what is truly precious to you. This lesson hadn't came to me until the end and I truly didn't feel as if I was making any form of meaningful connections until our exodus.

This is the document of my journey.