Shot on Rotorua Island and Stewart Island, New Zealand, using a Hasselblad XPan film camera, Lost Paradise Isle is an exploration of memory, displacement, and the tension between nature’s stillness and its inevitable transformation. The panoramic format stretches time and space, echoing the vastness of landscapes that hold both history and impermanence within them.

This series captures a place that feels both untouched and forgotten, suspended between paradise and loss. Through using black-and-white film then hand processed, I would like to embrace the interplay of light and shadow, of presence and absence, creating images that speak to the fragility of human connection to land, and the ghosts of stories left behind. In Lost Paradise Isle, the islands are not just a physical space but a psychological terrain—a site of longing, isolation, and quiet reverence.

On the far-off, mysterious but beautiful Stuart Island, I bid farewell to the land where I grew up with genuine wishes, ready to move on to my new phase of life.