The lantern festival arrives once a year, marking the first full moon of the lunar new year. The banquet hall fills with lights and the feeling of spring entering, a threshold between the lingering stress of school and the coming spring break.

I had been living in the same rhythm for months - work, sleep, the same routes between the same places. Something about the festival felt like permission to look up, to enjoy a formal banquet with no bounds, getting to move through freely with my lens and no particular destination.

What drew me to photograph it was not the spectacle itself but the faces gathered around it: strangers standing close together in the dark, sharing warmth in front of something briefly bright. The performances and bright lights surrounding the venue gave everyone a reason to participate.

I spent the evening moving through crowds without a plan, following light wherever it pooled. There is a particular quality to photographs made in celebration, something between documentation and longing, as though the camera already knows the night is ending.

March 15, 2026