Hi, I'm Mark Ma from Shanghai China

I was born and raised in Henan Province, a region marked by limited educational resources and slow development. In that environment, leaving was not an act of ambition but a shared instinct. For many children there, the future felt geographically and socially distant, and the college entrance examination became the only visible passage outward.

That exam eventually brought me to Shanghai. The shift—from a place defined by scarcity to a city shaped by speed and density—deeply altered my relationship with time and memory. I became acutely aware of how moments slip away, how personal histories are quietly overwritten by movement and progress.

Today, I use photography as a way to hold time still. The camera allows me to pause, observe, and give form to experiences that might otherwise disappear. For me, making images is not about spectacle, but about preservation: fixing fragments of lived reality before they are lost.