Laoniang: A Photographic Study of Ageing, Family and Independence

A photographic enquiry into the intersections of kinship, ageing, domesticity and self-determination, examining the photographer's relationship with her maternal grandmother. About Presented by The Koppel Project, Laoniang is a photographic enquiry into the intersections of kinship, ageing, domesticity and self-determination. Situated within the intimacies of intergenerational life, the project by Zhiyan Liu considers how everyday practices, attachments to place and forms of embodied knowledge shape an individual's experience of later life. Through a sustained engagement with her maternal grandmother, the photographer examines the tensions between familial care and personal autonomy, attending to the assumptions through which ageing, labour and independence are understood. Moving between the specificity of lived experience and broader questions of social perception, Laoniang invites a reconsideration of how we look at, interpret and understand lives that remain, in essential ways, irreducible to the perspectives of others. Laoniang is the name photographer Zhiyan Liu has used for her maternal grandmother since childhood. She lived with her grandparents until the age of seven, before moving between different cities and countries. As the distance between them grew, their time together became less frequent. Following her grandfather's death, the finite nature of these relationships came into sharper focus, prompting a renewed attention to the everyday life of her grandmother, now eighty years old. The photographic series takes shape through this return to a familiar yet increasingly distant figure. Rooted in an intimate family relationship, Laoniang attends to the ordinary rhythms of her grandmother's life: working the land, tending the courtyard, caring for animals, preparing food and resting at home. Through these recurring activities, the photographer seeks to reconsider what it means to know someone over time, and how a life that has been familiar since childhood might be understood anew. Her grandmother's days remain closely organised around the land and the responsibilities of her home. She knows when to plant peanuts and when to harvest, how to tend the vegetables and flowers, and how to care for the animals in her courtyard. These are not tasks she has recently acquired, but practices shaped by decades of experience, embedded in her understanding of the seasons and the place in which she lives. To other members of the family, the physical demands of this work are a cause for concern. They would prefer her to do less and rest more, particularly as she grows older. The photographer initially shared this view, regarding her grandmother's labour primarily as a burden. Spending time observing and photographing her, however, has brought a different perspective into view. The work may be tiring, but it also carries knowledge, purpose and a degree of self-determination. What appears repetitive from the outside is, for her grandmother, part of an established way of living. The same distinction emerges in her relationship with home. Although she could live with one of her children, she prefers to remain in her own house. She visits her son's family for meals and occasionally stays with the photographer's family, but these visits are often interrupted by thoughts of the geese that need feeding, the vegetables that need watering, or the flowers that require attention. Before long, she wants to return. Home, in this sense, is not simply a place of familiarity or shelter. It is a space in which her presence remains necessary, where responsibilities give structure to the day and where her relationship with the land, plants and animals continues through acts of care. Her attachment to the house is inseparable from the life she maintains within it. These observations have unsettled the assumptions through which the photographer once understood her grandmother's circumstances. The family's concern for her health and comfort is sincere, yet it rests on an idea of a better life that may not entirely correspond with her own. Reduced labour, greater convenience and the availability of care are not necessarily the only measures by which she understands her well-being. Continuing to work, remaining in her home and deciding how to spend her time are also significant. Concern and autonomy need not be mutually exclusive, but recognising the difference between them requires a willingness to look beyond the intentions of those who care for her. The project consequently approaches ageing not as a condition defined solely by physical decline or increasing dependence, but as a period in which the desire for agency persists. Independence need not entail refusing assistance or undertaking every task alone. It may reside in the more modest decisions that give shape to daily life: where to live, when to return home, what needs attending to and which routines to preserve. In Laoniang, these decisions emerge not through declarations, but through repeated gestures and the ordinary movement of days. The circumstances of the photographs are shaped by the longstanding trust between the two women. Her grandmother knows that she is being photographed and has consistently supported the project, despite not fully understanding how the images will eventually be presented. She has also expressed that she would not permit the same access to anyone else. The camera is therefore situated within a relationship that precedes the work and continues beyond it. Rather than interrupting her grandmother's activities or asking her to perform for the image, the photographer observes as she carries on with her daily life. The resulting photographs attend to the intervals and repetitions through which that life unfolds: work in the fields, the movement of hands at the table, moments of rest beside a window, and time spent with family. Neither labour nor repose is isolated as the defining feature of her existence. Together, these moments register the varied ways in which she inhabits her surroundings, revealing a life that cannot be reduced to the physical demands of work or the perceived vulnerabilities of old age. Photography becomes, in this context, a means of sustained attention rather than an attempt to arrive at a definitive understanding. Familiar scenes disclose details that might otherwise pass unnoticed, while the act of looking also exposes the limits of what can be known. Intimacy does not confer complete access to another person's experience. The photographer cannot determine precisely what each task means to her grandmother, nor does she seek to frame her life as a straightforward account of hardship, contentment or resilience. The images remain partial, shaped by the photographer's position within the relationship and by the choices involved in making and presenting them. As the work moves from the privacy of family life into the exhibition space, this partiality becomes more pronounced. Viewers encounter an older woman whose circumstances they do not know, and whose decisions may initially be read through familiar assumptions about age, vulnerability and care. Work may be interpreted as hardship; living alone as a cause for concern; established habits as evidence of reluctance to change. Such responses often arise from genuine concern, but they also reveal how readily another person's life is measured against expectations formed elsewhere. Laoniang does not seek to replace these judgments with an alternative prescription, or to establish that her grandmother's choices are preferable to those of others. Instead, the work leaves room for the distance between looking and understanding. It asks what might become visible when the impulse to assess is suspended, and when the ordinary details of a person's life are given sustained attention. What appears unnecessary or burdensome to one person may hold a different significance for another, shaped by experience, memory, responsibility and attachment to place. The series remains grounded in a particular relationship, but its concerns extend beyond it. The questions that arise from photographing her grandmother touch on broader understandings of care, ageing and independence, and on the difficulty of reconciling the wish for another person's well-being with respect for their own choices. The work suggests that care does not always begin with knowing what is best for someone else. It may also require recognising the limits of one's understanding, and allowing another person's habits, priorities and attachments to retain their complexity. Initially conceived as a way of preserving time spent together, Laoniang has developed into an ongoing record of a life in progress. The photographs hold moments that might otherwise be lost, but they do not belong solely to the past or anticipate a future absence. They attend to the present: to a woman who continues to work the land, care for her home and organise her days according to a rhythm established over many years. Through this sustained act of looking, Zhiyan Liu returns to a relationship she has known since childhood, finding within its familiarity a continuing process of discovery. Zhiyan Liu is a London-based photographer and visual artist whose practice moves between documentary photography and explorations of light, colour and everyday life. Her work is rooted in close observation of people, their relationships and the spaces they inhabit. Through projects concerned with family life, work and belonging, she explores how personal histories and daily routines shape people's connections to familiar places. Alongside these projects, she photographs natural light and ordinary landscapes, drawn to the visual beauty of moments that might otherwise go unnoticed. Read more Toggle Photography