Graduation marks a significant transition, as young people leave campus and step into a new stage of life. In the height of summer, farewells intertwine with anticipation. The places soon to be left behind, the people encountered, and the paths once travelled gradually become treasured memories viewed from the future. Summer in Our Hands emerges from such a moment embodied by instant photography: an image appears from the camera, rests in one’s hands, and carries this summer forward into the years ahead, as a tangible fragment of youth.
Bringing together Hanin’s ongoing exploration of instant imaging and Three Shadows Photography Art Centre’s long-standing commitment to supporting emerging photographers, the two organizations jointly launched Summer in Our Hands: Hanin Graduation Season. As part of the project, the Graduation Journey Creation Program invited graduating students from all across China to submit proposals, from which five young artists were selected. Equipped with Hanin instant cameras, they set out on journeys of their own, transforming encounters, movements, and moments of pause into photographic works shaped by their individual perspectives, preserving a summer that is unfolding in the present.
Travelling through islands, lakes, ancient towns, and mountain villages, the five artists each embarked on a distinct journey of observing place, culture, and personal growth. Chen Ziyan follows ‘water’ as the thread of her project, moving between the coast of Dalian and her hometown by Dongting Lake, where the visual dialogue between sea and lake becomes a means of connecting family memory, lived experience, and personal emotion. Qiu Qi immersed himself in fishing villages on the islands surrounding Dalian, engaging with local residents and documenting their daily lives while exploring how photography can create trust and human connection. Xu Siyuan approached traveling as an experiment in seeing, gathering fragments of everyday life throughout the streets, coastlines, and urban spaces of Croatia, and reassembling ordinary objects into imaginative visual narratives. Yang Zixi travelled through Xunpu Village, Chongwu Ancient Town, and the Huian coast, focusing on local traditions, folk beliefs, and women’s lived experiences, observing how everyday life sustains regional culture. Zhang Zhekai journeyed to the Dongdao artists’ community in Guizhou, beginning from an imagined ‘pastoral utopia’ and gradually reflecting on his own pursuit of an ideal way of dwelling through observing the relationship between people and the land.
Alongside the Graduation Journey Creation Program, the project also launched the Campus Drifting Program, inviting graduating students from twelve universities across China to document campus life and graduation moment through instant photography and share their images on social media. Selected works from the project are presented outdoors at Three Shadows Xiamen Photography Art Centre.
For graduating students, instant photography is more than a tool for recording moments; it is a way of inhabiting time. It preserves the hesitation before pressing the shutter, the hype from anticipation of watching an image slowly emerge, and the tactile experience of finally holding the photograph in one’s hands. Together, these images—originating from different cities, journeys, and lived experiences—form a collective visual archive of farewell, departure, and becoming.
Through open calls, artistic journeys, and public exhibition, Summer in Our Hands: Hanin Graduation Season connects individual memories with shared experiences. Moments once lived on campus, along roads, in unfamiliar cities, and within everyday life reappear through the materiality of instant photography, allowing a passing summer to endure in another form.