The better life
This photography project focuses on the wedding ceremonies of the Wenzhou immigrant community in Paris. Since the arrival of the first generation of immigrants, the survival logic of Wenzhou people in France has always revolved around labor and accumulation. As the largest Chinese community in France, Wenzhou people have continued their pronounced tradition of commerce and their strong awareness of family resources. As a social ritual, the wedding is a focal point for the cohesion of family and community relations. Attire, ceremonies, and the arrangement of scenes make this moment highly symbolic: wealth, belonging, dignity, and happiness are condensed here, forming their collective imagination of the future and their ideals.
What interests me is the decorative tendency presented in these weddings: vibrant artificial flowers, intense colors, strict ceremonial order, and the basic need to simultaneously satisfy demands for convenience and practicality. This consistency across time is not an unconscious stagnation, but perhaps an active cultural strategy — a cultural orientation that prioritizes functionality. Such cultural reproduction allows them to maintain internal group identity while constructing their own boundaries within a foreign society.
I focus on color, ornamentation, and spatial order, attempting to point to a deeper reality: how resources circulate, how identities are confirmed, and how culture continues and solidifies within a diasporic context. By gazing at these seemingly similar scenes, we may better understand the logic of this “functional aesthetics” and how a group’s relationship with the world is manifested through ritual.