Words by
INK Focus - Sirui Ma
For photographer Sirui Ma Little Things Mean a Lot
Born in Beijing and raised in New York - after a brief passage in the UK, Sirui Ma moved back to London in 2017 where started working as a photographer. Since then, her work has been featured in publications such as Dazed, L’officiel, The Face and W Mag. Also working commercially for Nike, Gap, Stüssy, and MCQ to name a few.
Ma just made her debut solo exhibition with Little Things Mean a Lot, a series in which she is exploring the joy in little things .
As she captures the quiet connections and details that often go unnoticed in the rush of everyday life through her unique perspective, she offers an intimate and moving self-portrait.
We asked Sirui some questions about the project and her creative approach.
Over the course of shooting the project, at which stage you begin to start thinking how you would order the work in the Exhibition? Did it impact the way you approached shoot days or ideas for visual narratives?
It wasn’t until that I had printed all of my favourite images that I began thinking about the format of the exhibition. Even then it was still very difficult to edit out as I had over 100 images. I think after I knew what the exhibition space looked like was when the final form of the exhibit began to take shape, which images made sense together, which images felt good in what size, etc. So my process was mostly editing down at the end, the shooting process was quite open-ended in that sense.
You have previously cited a ‘nomadic’ approach to your photography, how do your working practices help you find beauty in places where others might not look and see these locations through a different lens?
It’s not necessarily a working process per se, maybe more a way of carefully perceiving the world around me. I recently watched Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days and I really resonated with the main character Hirayama and the way he lived.
Have you always worked with Analog and why?
Yes. I was always drawn to the slower, more tactile process.
Can you describe the dynamic between you and your subjects? Were your photography sessions formally organised as shoots, or did they evolve naturally from spending time with friends and then develop into the work?
Maybe a more accurate description would be a hangout with a camera involved, haha. So I’d say it was a combination of both.
Many of the moments in your work capture plants and creatures thriving in the wild, sometimes under adverse conditions. Do these scenes reflect your own experiences of resilience and vulnerability?
In a way I probably saw something of myself in them. How things survive and thrive in precarity can be so beautiful.
Can you tell us about the picture of the love note?
I found it outside my old flat, actually. It looked like it had blown out of someone’s garbage, which is a bit heartbreaking. But the message is really beautiful. It’s quite mysterious.
Can you describe your dev process when working with handprints?
I print all of my own work. I love being in the darkroom and seeing the images emerge. Some days I can get a lot done, and on others it takes hours just to do one print. It’s somewhat unpredictable but that’s also what makes it fun.
The team really enjoyed working on your images, the post-process was relatively stripped back. A lot of workload was cleaning dust and fibres from the pictures, which allowed the team to feel an intimate connection to the project. Over the course of the project did your relationship with the imagery change? Are there any of the pictures that resonate with you in particular?
I can’t stress enough how grateful I am for your help on this project! I can be overly-attached to my images and sometimes it takes me days to even clean up one image. Having the time and space away from the pictures allowed me to look at them a bit more holistically, which was really helpful in considering them as one body of work, in a way. Each image is different and I was drawn to each moment for a reason.