All photographs posted here are the property of Feng Liu and are protected by Copyright Law. The images may not be reproduced, copied, archived or reworked in any way without the written permission of Feng Liu. No images are part of the public domain.
For me, losing my great mentor and dear friend, Jean-Jacques Naudet, is the deepest sorrow I have ever known. I only just received this devastating news—having discovered it when I saw my portfolio featured in "The Eye of Photography", yet noticed that Jean-Jacques Naudet’s contact email was missing. At this moment, I am left speechless. The entire world has lost a true titan of the photographic realm. It was he who, just ten years ago, encouraged me to launch my own personal website; and as recently as last October, I had written to him.
I simply wish to express my sincere gratitude to you for the assistance you have provided over the past decade—guidance that has charted a clear course for my street photography. It was you who set me on the right path and suggested that I establish my own website; today, I deeply realize just how pivotal that step has been for my career in street photography. You are the wind beneath my wings; it is precisely because of your support that I have been able to take flight.
I have found that the photographic styles of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Doisneau resonate perfectly with my own nature. I intend to follow in their footsteps, engaging in pure street photography to capture those fleeting moments—without staging, retouching, or the use of AI.
Chicago: A City Seen Through My Lens
In 1999, I moved from Shanghai, China, to Chicago. I arrived as an outsider, knowing little about the city beyond what I had imagined from afar. Almost immediately, I was captivated by its energy—the movement of its streets, the strength of its architecture, the diversity of its people, and the extraordinary rhythm of everyday life. Chicago felt powerful, restless, generous, and constantly in motion.
I had never experienced anything quite like it.
I wanted to understand this new city, but I also felt an instinctive need to remember it. Photography became my way of doing both.
Photography had been a lifelong passion. Although my first profession in Chicago was engineering, I soon found myself spending much of my free time walking through the city with a camera. I photographed whatever caught my attention, but increasingly I photographed whatever moved me: people at work and at play, celebrations and quiet moments, grand buildings and overlooked corners, acts of generosity and moments of solitude.
With every walk, every photograph, and every encounter, I began to develop a personal relationship with Chicago.
A City of Many Stories
What struck me most was Chicago's extraordinary diversity. Its neighborhoods brought together people whose families, languages, traditions, and histories originated in nearly every part of the world. On the streets, I encountered traces of those cultures everywhere—in food, clothing, music, religious traditions, festivals, family gatherings, storefronts, and neighborhood rituals.
What impressed me was not simply the presence of different cultures, but the way they endured.
People carried their traditions with them. They preserved them, practiced them, shared them with their children, and passed them from one generation to the next. At the same time, those traditions became part of the larger life of Chicago.
The more I photographed the city, the more I began to see something beyond diversity.
I began to see similarity within difference.
People came from different countries and spoke different languages. They carried different memories, beliefs, customs, and histories. Yet beneath those differences, I repeatedly encountered the same fundamental human qualities: hope, love, dignity, resilience, generosity, independence, curiosity, and the desire to create a better life.
I saw parents caring for their children, workers taking pride in what they did, friends gathering together, strangers helping one another, young people dreaming about the future, and older generations holding tightly to memories of the past.
The details were different.
The human experience was remarkably similar.
Becoming Part of the City
I gradually came to understand that Chicago changes everyone who comes here, just as everyone who comes here changes Chicago.
Each community leaves something behind—a restaurant, a church, a business, a festival, a language, a neighborhood tradition, a story. At the same time, the city becomes part of the identity of those who live within it.
For me, this was not an abstract idea. I experienced it personally.
I arrived from Shanghai with the perspective of an outsider. At first, I was simply observing Chicago. Over time, however, observation became participation. The streets I photographed became familiar. The neighborhoods became part of my daily life. The people I encountered became part of my understanding of the city.
The camera was my bridge.
Through photography, I learned how to look closely. I learned that a city reveals itself not only through its landmarks, skyline, and monumental architecture, but through the small moments that happen around them.
A wedding party walking down Michigan Avenue.
A restaurateur carrying boxes of food to people experiencing homelessness beneath the bridges.
A worker beginning a long day.
A family gathering around a table.
A parade moving through a neighborhood.
A stranger waiting alone.
A child looking at something with complete wonder.
These moments may appear ordinary, but together they form the character of a city.
The Poetry of the Ordinary
I have photographed Chicago for more than two decades, from its most recognizable landmarks to its quietest streets. I have photographed skylines, buildings, festivals, parades, weddings, workers, families, neighborhoods, celebrations, and countless encounters that lasted only a few seconds.
But I have never believed that photography is only about spectacular moments.
In many ways, the ordinary moments are the most revealing.
A city is not simply its architecture. A city is the life taking place between the buildings.
Sometimes I knew immediately that I had encountered something meaningful. Other times, I photographed a moment without fully understanding why it had caught my attention. Only years later, looking back at the image, did I realize what it had preserved.
That is one of the mysteries of photography.
A photograph can preserve much more than what appears inside its frame. It can preserve a feeling, a relationship, a gesture, an atmosphere, a particular way of living, or the presence of people who might otherwise have disappeared from our collective memory.
Photography allows a fleeting moment to remain.
A Visual Memory of Chicago
At the turn of the millennium, I became increasingly aware of how quickly cities change. Buildings are renovated or demolished. Businesses disappear. Neighborhoods evolve. People move away. Streets that seem permanent can look completely different a few years later.
I felt an urgency to document Chicago as I was experiencing it.
I wanted to create more than a collection of photographs. I wanted to create a visual record—a personal history of Chicago at a particular moment in time.
I hoped that someday these photographs might allow someone who had never lived through that period to see the city as it was. But more importantly, I hoped they might allow that person to sense something of how the city felt.
Because a photograph can tell us what a place looked like.
A great photograph can also remind us who we were.
A City That Never Ends
Over the years, I have come to understand that a city is never finished.
Chicago is constantly being rebuilt and reinvented. It remembers its past while making room for its future. It loses things and gains new ones. Neighborhoods change. New generations arrive. Old traditions are transformed. New traditions emerge.
The city is alive because it is always changing.
Its streets contain layers of memory—stories belonging to people who arrived generations ago, people who arrived yesterday, and people who are still trying to find their place.
Perhaps this is what first captivated me in 1999.
I arrived in Chicago as an engineer from Shanghai, looking at a new world through the eyes of an outsider. Photography gave me a reason to walk into that world, to slow down, to observe, to ask questions, and to connect.
Eventually, the city that I had been photographing became the city in which I belonged.
Through the Lens
I came to Chicago to build a life.
Along the way, I found a city worth documenting.
For more than two decades, my camera has been my way of listening to Chicago. It has allowed me to witness its celebrations and struggles, its extraordinary diversity and its quiet similarities, its monumental spaces and intimate moments.
Looking back, I realize that I was never simply photographing a city.
I was photographing people becoming part of a place—and a place becoming part of them.
And perhaps, without realizing it at first, I was photographing my own journey as well.
The journey of an immigrant arriving in a new country.
The journey of an outsider becoming an observer.
The journey of an observer becoming a participant.
And finally, the journey of discovering that when we look deeply enough at another place, we often discover something of ourselves.
Chicago is the subject of these photographs.
But belonging is their deeper story.