Chinese photographer Lanxi Ruan, while living abroad in Germany (Berlin) during the third lockdown, creates a series of minimal staged photographs on multiple nightly walks with her friends.
After years of staying away from her home land, she decides to tell her personal story of nostalgia, lack of belonging and feelings of displacement. Through her photographic practice, she attempts to transform her psychological state into a surreal dreamlike tale with her protagonists seen as creatures, animals, isolated in nature trying to hide from an unseen predator or becoming one themselves. In an interaction with their surroundings and exposing moments of childlike playfulness, Lanxi Ruan creates a new world, a mysterious playground in which the feelings of solitude and danger coexist.
In June 2022, the series is enclosed in a dummy photo book named “Soft Animal”. The title of the book is inspired by American Poet Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese, “You only have to let the soft animal of your body, love what it loves".