This project is part of an ongoing exploration of East and West and my attempt to establish my identity in relation to each. At home in Taiwan

I didn't feel the need to question my own cultural identity, I just lived it.

1 accepted without question the visions of the West depicted in the media and became a believer in the myth of American culture. Over time, through interaction with people and by living in the United States, I began to realize the complexity of Western culture. Moreover, the experiences I've had and the observations I've made in the West have challenged and altered my perceptions of the East. Photography is central to this process.

Originally, the photographs I took were the raw material for my study of the two cultures. The images of what I saw, my everyday experiences, and the attempt to understand the two different cultures blended together in a process too complex to capture and represent in single images.

I borrow my method of grouping images from principles of Chinese language in which characters function more as signs than letters or words. Each character has its own meaning and pronunciation. By joining characters in different ways new meanings are created. Order and context are critical. I see my photographs as similar to Chinese characters. Each has its own beauty and message and can be arranged to create metaphorical visual sentences.

Form and content are integral in the grouping. I also print photographs as a group, manipulating contrast, tone and picture size to highlight visual relationships between the images. The spacing and positioning of prints is merely the final step of my image-making process.

The work is constructed in six parts. Each represents different perspectives of my intercultural experience:

1. Introduction
2. Seeing east: Eastern culture as portrayed in Western society.
3. East seeing: What I have seen in the East.
4. Seeing west: My perceptions and initial impressions of the West.
5. West seeing: Confronting the complexity of U.S. culture while in the U.S.A.
6. Afterward

In Seeing East Seeing West Seeing I confront the dilemma of wanting to retain aspects of my Chinese heritage in an increasingly Westernized world.