Yanyi He

Night, Part II: Chaos | 2025

Night | 2025 is a two-part nocturnal photographic limited edition series and, at its core, a journey into the poetic extremes of the urban night.

It is both an exploration of the city after dark and a reflection on the paradoxes of existence, between solitude and exposure, chaos and purity, black and white.

Into the Night

The series began during a bout of insomnia, when Yanyi found himself walking alone through the city streets at night, camera in hand. Echoing Charles Dickens’s own nocturnal wanderings, these solitary walks opened a space of quiet reflection:

“Without people, there is no need to worry about the eyes of others. If you don’t sleep, you don’t need to worry about how long you can’t sleep. Night gives me an inexplicable sense of security; there are no gazes from others, nor that feeling of being exposed under the sunlight, heartsick with anxiety. So later, I began to enjoy wandering through this city at night, especially in places without people.” – Yanyi He

“No matter how hard I think about it, I find that everything is meaningless. Everything begins in chaos, and ends in chaos. I look at myself, I am chaos. I look at the world, the world is chaos. Reality is the colour grey, and grey is chaos. We all live in chaos.” – Yanyi He

Chaos

Night, Part II: Chaos reflects Yanyi’s meditations on life, self, and the fragile fabric of reality:

“No matter how hard I think about it, I find that everything is meaningless. Everything begins in chaos, and ends in chaos. I look at myself, I am chaos. I look at the world, the world is chaos. Reality is the colour grey, and grey is chaos. We all live in chaos.” – Yanyi He

To evoke this sense of dissolution, Yanyi experimented with oil applied directly to the camera lens, softening the light and diffusing the image. The resulting photographs bear a delicate, hazy grey atmosphere, mirroring his vision of existence itself:

“The soft grey look of the pictures fits the chaos of the world. I was looking for myself in this project, to find reality.” – Yanyi He

“The soft grey look of the pictures fits the chaos of the world. I was looking for myself in this project, to find reality.” – Yanyi He

Night | 2025

Yanyi He’s Night | 2025 is a nocturnal urban photography limited edition series unfolding in two parts: Part I: Pure Black and Part II: Chaos. Shot on black-and-white film, each body of work approaches the city after dark from a distinct visual and conceptual register, one meditative and restrained, the other fragmented and volatile.

The series may be collected as individual works or curated thematic sets, each forming a distinct constellation within the nocturnal narrative.

Explore Night | 2025:
View Part I: Pure Black
View Part II: Chaos

About

Yanyi He

Yanyin He is a visual artist from Changsha, China, whose work explores the boundaries between photography, chemistry, and the unknown.

He studied photography at WES Academy, where he developed a passion for experimental techniques, particularly liquid-based processes and night photography.

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