"There is no single way to look at Asia, and a new publication, simply titled Asia, from editor Ko Ueoka and art director Menghan Li understands this from the outset. In its debut edition, the vast continent is presented through multiple gazes, native, migrant and passerby. The result is a snapshot of the many Asias that exist simultaneously: the remembered past, the observed present and the imagined future, as seen by those who live within these worlds and those who wander through them."
"Ueoka was born and raised in Tokyo, later relocating to London, then Paris, while Li lived in Japan, the United States and China before moving to Paris to study. Both have remained in the French capital. Displacement sits quietly at the centre of the Asia publication's formation. Reflecting on its influence, Ueoka notes, "When you live abroad, away from the country where you were born and raised, you're inevitably forced to confront your own identity. This was a feeling I never experienced while living in Japan.""
An annual photographic volume assembles images from across Asia, presenting multiple gazes—native, migrant and passerby—that reveal remembered pasts, observed presents and imagined futures. Ten contributors document diverse locales including Jeju Island, Shanghai, Dhaka, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Inner Mongolia, Latmos and Kanazawa, offering landscapes, youth culture, urban life and domestic interiors. Photographs appear as fragments of a larger unfinished story: hands mid-gesture, cities between erosion and renewal, interiors heavy with memory. Displacement and transnational movement shape the project's formation, prompting re-examination of identity and a desire to discover layered, intersecting Asias through photographic encounter.
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