There is a common preconception about what Chinese people look like, but the country’s population—which includes 56 different ethnic groups—is far from monolithic. For photographer Hailun Ma, a desire to showcase the melting pot of cultures that make up her native Xinjiang, in northwestern China, has informed some of her most compelling work.
“What I shoot is always about home—it’s very instinctive and emotive,” says the 30-year old, whose C.V. includes covers for Vogue China and work with brands like Nike and Burberry. As a child, she discovered her love of photography by placing a camera on a bookshelf and taking “Cindy Sherman-esque” self-portraits with a timer, often in different outfits stolen from her mother’s wardrobe. Yet it would take leaving home for Ma to find her own creative voice. At the age of 18, she went to study in New York, and it was while getting her MPS in fashion photography at the School of Visual Arts that she hit upon what she really wanted to express. “It was the first time I was asked to consider what fashion meant to me, and how I define beauty,” she explains over the phone from Shanghai. “It directly channelled back to my memories growing up in Xinjiang.”
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