Entry Title: " Bees"
Name: Zhe Chen, United States
Category: Professional, Photo Essay and Feature Story


Entry Description: To jeopardize existence for existence itself: “Bees” recorded a marginalized group of people in China, who, faced with chaos, violence, alienation and irredeemable losses in life, feels propelled to leave physical traces and markings on their bodies, in order to preserve and corroborate a pure and sensitive mind from within. In 2010, having “The Bearable”(a photo series documenting my own self-infliction in the past 4 years) as my passport, I had the opportunity to develop a close relationship with some of these obstinate souls – the bees. During the process of exchanging secrets with them, I crossed path with certain possibilities that were formerly unachieved but towards which I had struggled greatly in my personal life. I'm struck by the unyielding actions and reactions they carry on with while encountering sudden and acute emotional fluxes, and moved by the recurrent effort they make to recover themselves afterwards. No matter how different our lives seem to be, we undoubtedly shared common psychological experiences.

Brought up in Beijing, China, Zhe Chen is a photo-based artist currently living in Los Angeles. In the past four years Zhe has been documenting self-inflicted activities of her own and others, while creating a series of projects focusing on body modification, human hair, identity confusion, post-traumatic stress disorder and memory. Zhe Chen is the winner of 2011 Threeshadows Photography Award and Inge Morath Award. Her work has been featured in publications internationally.