I'm Jake Xue, a photographer from Shanghai, China. My photographic journey began during my college years abroad, but it was in the vibrant chaos of New York City where it truly crystallized. The city's overwhelming visual and cultural landscape beckoned me to capture its essence, making the camera a natural extension of my desire to decipher the world.

Photography, for me, is an endless dialogue with reality—a way to sculpt and reshape my narrative. Influenced by the haunting worlds of sci-fi classics like Blade Runner, I am captivated by darker, cinematic hues, using them to peer into realms beyond the ordinary. The disorienting grip of the pandemic left me questioning the very fabric of reality, which fueled the creation of Galaxy by the Waterside and Minutes to Midnight. In these works, I sought to conjure an escape to alien dimensions, offering a glimpse of what lies beyond our everyday existence.

Afterglow Hours represents a journey of reconnection—a quest to rediscover the warmth of human intimacy and ground myself once more in the earth, as street photography is where my journey began. Through my lens, my subjects reflect my inner world while revealing fragments of their own. This delicate interplay between artist and subject—where each moment captures the essence of both—forms the heart of what I find most profound and fulfilling in photography.