I'm a stranger in my own home.
I was born in Macau, grew up in Macau and left home when I was 16. In 2017, I returned to Macau on a regular basis to start a project related to children, which was abruptly ended in 2020 when the pandemic hit the world. I found a new base in the mid-Atlantics to continue my work with children and didn't visit the town again until 2024.
To go on field study with the innocent lens of a visual researcher allowed me to drape myself in yet another layer of identity. I was at once a local, a visitor, a storyteller, a critic and a researcher. Every moment was a deeply-felt alchemy of rediscovery, hurt and yet inspiration.
Hurt? Most natives of Macau would probably choose the word "pain" instead. Indeed, it is painful to see Macau being swallowed and absorbed into a grander narrative. It is typical of Macanese philosophy to passively go along. After all, we had been a colony for a few hundred years previously.
Why "hurt" then? I reckon that it is an even more grating and in-your-bones feeling which leaves you no option but to react, instead of patiently bearing the pain. Research may not scream but it illuminates the dark corners and unseen layers of our reality.
Which brings us to the night theme of Macau.
On a typical day, the tiny town is swarmed with tourists, the number of which exceeds the local population by more than ten fold. So night time is the only solace if one is hoping to walk the streets without being pushed, shoved or run over.
The streets of Macau may be quieter after dark, but they are certainly not unlit. In fact, "well-lit" may be too mild a term for Macau after dark. The town practically comes alive after dark. Casinos, hotels, event halls, shopping centres show their true form at night, blinding mortals with glitz and extravagance.
Avoiding darkness like the plague, high-end commercial buildings and posh residential complexes vie with one another for ornamental lighting which quickly spiral down into a show-off of excessive aesthetics.
No, they don't leave you alone in Macau. Retails and dining businesses big and small splash first on their gaudy lights, and then their honest trade.
On top of that, the administration of Macau celebrates all festive occasions by bundling the town up with decorative lightings and dazzling installations. There is also the International Light Festival and Fireworks Display Contest every year.
It is official, darkness does not exist in Macau.
Or rather, darkness is not acknowledged here. It is not legit.
As I went through the night scene images of Macau taken during my field study in November 2025, supplemented by photos previously shot on my visit between late 2023 and early 2024, I realised that I was diving into a place unknown even to myself. Except for Grand Lisboa (CON07220226), the other night-themed images were random pictures, taken without the remotest intention of doing anything out of it. Those were scenes I just had to capture at specific moments in space and time. And yet, they fitted so naturally into this vignette as a body of work as if I was simply collecting them all over town, consulting a shooting script complete with GPS coordinates and timecodes.
After two and a half years of collecting visual tokens of the town, I finally learnt to make sense of the mystery that is Macau by surrendering to its myriad of paradoxes and ambiguities. It has always been a process of unfolding and revealing. We have been trying so hard to look at the revealed and explain them away, all the time missing what’s hidden in the dark by naming it invisible and therefore not to be known.