Sean Lee
李培炀

I began taking pictures of my parents in 2011, though the reasons that led me to do so now seem lost to me. Perhaps this is the way of things, when you repeat an action over time—it begins to shed its original meaning. Now, when I look at the photographs, I realize they are no longer about anything except the quiet act of cherishing.

Fifteen years have passed, and photography has woven itself into the fabric of our lives, a quiet thread that binds us together. As I sift through the images we’ve made, patterns begin to emerge—ones of aging, of wear, of the inevitable erosion of time. Photography, in its essence, is a record of loss. But amid the fading faces, there is also something deeper—an unspoken mystery of lineage.

In recent years, a new generation has arrived—my niece and nephew, innocent and unknowing. Watching my parents care for them is like putting on a pair of magical glasses, one that allows me to peer into the past and see how they must have been with us when we were small. It’s a strange, sweet kind of nostalgia.

My father’s health has been failing, and my mother too, is showing the weight of her years. Their time, I know, will come to an end. This is the way of life. And yet, in the deepest part of me, I understand that I am not separate from them. In the pulse of my heart, in the breath that moves through me, there are fragments of them—my father’s quiet strength, my mother’s warmth. In this way, and in the pictures we have made together, they live on.