Everyone’s Lujiazui and the Same Lujiazui

Everyone’s Lujiazui and the Same Lujiazui developed from the series Everyone Is a Photographer. For this work, I collected photographs of Shanghai’s Lujiazui district taken by tourists, residents, and amateur photographers and circulated online. I then rearranged and combined the images according to their dates and the changing states of the buildings they depict.

The photographs present Lujiazui from different positions, seasons, weather conditions, and recording devices. Each photographer occupies an individual viewpoint, leaving traces of a particular visit, visual preference, and personal experience. When brought together, however, these images repeatedly return to the same architecture, the same skyline, and an increasingly shared imagination of the city.

The work focuses particularly on the construction of the Shanghai Tower. Over several years, numerous strangers photographed the same building as it gradually rose above the city. Reassembled chronologically, these fragmented images allow the tower to appear as though it is being constructed once again within the work. Individual photographs collectively form an unofficial urban archive, preserving a continuous record of the city’s physical transformation.

Images circulated online are often separated from their original contexts, rapidly viewed, shared, and forgotten. By restoring temporal connections and narrative order, I bring these private records into a collective structure of observation. “Everyone’s Lujiazui” refers to the memories and viewpoints of separate individuals, while “the same Lujiazui” describes how an urban landmark becomes a shared visual image through repeated photography and circulation.