Chosen Light — Howard Leu

In the Chosen Light

2024-25

This series of digital photographs is an examination of my childhood home as an adult while visiting my mother. It’s the home that was stable and a start of prosperity and peace for me, my sister, and my mother. My mother was a widow with two teens. She worked hard to purchase this five-story walkup apartment in Neihu, a soon to be a thriving commerial and residential districts in Taipei. I was a late teen and wanted nothing but freedom and to be out of any parental control, even though I was a latchkey kid since I was 13 years old. Now this is where me and my wife Chelsea stay when we visit every year. We stay in my sister’s room because my old bedroom was quickly turned into a walk-in closet when I moved out over 20 years ago. I was in my early 20s, and now in my late 40s. My sister’s room is a memory capsule, a reliquary of her late-teen/early-twenties.

Memories arise and intersect with scenes in front of me.