Walking Away
《步行逃跑》Pages: 40
Size: 11 x 18.5 cm
First Printing Date: March 2024
Language: Chinese, English
Edition: 30 Copies
Binding: Saddle-stitched
Walking Away is a photobook made by multimedia artist Song Lu during her art residency on the reclaimed land of Haidian Island. She repeatedly walked along a road leading to the seaside, where the color of green, blue, yellow, black, and white, constituted her entire life before summer arrived. The photobook records leisurely residents, wreckage from accidents, winter fireworks, foggy evenings, local fishing method, as well as traces of plants and insects through photography.
Walking Away is completed in the spring of 2024 before the operation custom closure of the construction of the Hainan Free Trade Port in China.
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Meanwhile, each photobook copy contains different items that Song Lu found from Haidian Island, including the 2014 Guizhou Daily, the 2024 Spring Festival fireworks announcement in Haikou City, black-and-white film negatives not showed in the photo zine, snail shells collected by her grandmother, bird feathers, and plants, such as Duranta erecta, Red Osmanthus, Red Powderpuff, Garden corton, Hibiscus, Japanese laurel, Ti, Shameplant, Harebell, Aphelandra, Chinese ixora, Natal grass, and aerial roots of banyan tree. She temporarily preserved the plants using a lamination process. When the photo zine are delivered to collectors, some of the plants will change gradually over time, fading away from their original colors. Due to international transportation restrictions, versions containing plant specimens cannot be exhibited overseas.
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Walking Away is completed in the spring of 2024 before the operation custom closure of the construction of the Hainan Free Trade Port in China.
Walking Away 2
《步行逃跑 2》
Pages: 40
Size: 11 x 18.5 cm
First Printing Date: September 2024
Language: Chinese, English
Edition: 30 Copies
Binding: Saddle-stitched
Walking Away 2 is one of the works completed by artist Song Lu in her hometown of Liupanshui, Guizhou, China. Before returning to New York with her U.S. artist visa, she stayed briefly at her parents' home. The photographs of Liupanshui included in the book are taken from her backup hard drive, originally shot in 2018 before she began her MFA in photography in the United States. The children's drawings are from her kindergarten years. In this photobook, she seeks to reconnect with her initial, simple passions and observe her primal state.
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Walking Away 3
《步行逃跑 3》
Pages: 40
Size: 11 x 18.5 cm
First Printing Date: December 2024
Language: Chinese, English
Edition: 50 Copies
Binding: Saddle-stitched
Walking Away 3 is a fable in images, crafted on New York‘s Roosevelt Island. By merging AI-generated visuals with photographs of the island, Song Lu creates a bridge between the tangible and the intangible. This work navigates the interplay of reality and virtuality, uncovering fragments of truth through AI-generated imagery while seeking traces of life in the face of mortality.
At its core, the project questions: Is the cosmos merely a projection of the human mind?
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At its core, the project questions: Is the cosmos merely a projection of the human mind?
Walking Away 4
《步行逃跑 4》
Pages: 40
Size: 11 x 18.5 cm
First Printing Date: February 2025
Language: Chinese, English
Edition: 50 Copies
Binding: Saddle-stitched
Walking Away 4 is a photobook created by Song Lu during her residency in Idaho.
Unable to remain in one place, she followed a natural instinct toward migration, which continually propelled her forward. At the same time, this movement revealed her longing for adventure in unexpected detours, as well as her need to reflect on and maintain a simple life. The right half of the book features a flipbook animation that captures a bird in flight as it enters the frame. With the bird’s appearance, the story quietly begins.
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Unable to remain in one place, she followed a natural instinct toward migration, which continually propelled her forward. At the same time, this movement revealed her longing for adventure in unexpected detours, as well as her need to reflect on and maintain a simple life. The right half of the book features a flipbook animation that captures a bird in flight as it enters the frame. With the bird’s appearance, the story quietly begins.
Walking Away 5
《步行逃跑 5》
Pages: 40
Size: 11 x 18.5 cm
First Printing Date:
July 2025
Language: Chinese, English
Edition: 50 Copies
Binding: Saddle-stitched
Walking Away 5 unfolds in a state of consciousness suspended within a “non-place.” The book is composed of a series of small square oil pastel drawings created by the artist Song Lu over two months at dusk. Each drawing traces the inner states she perceived during those hours when light faltered and emotions drifted—fragmentary flashes of memory, hazy glimpses of the city’s edges, dream residues, and subtle sensations of the body.
Rather than being anchored to any fixed geography, this chapter grows out of her shifting psychological landscape, shaped by movement and self-reconstruction. Through the act of making, she sought to pause the external journey and redirect attention inward—toward the delicate shifts within—opening a way of seeing closer to what might be called a “topography of the soul.”
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Rather than being anchored to any fixed geography, this chapter grows out of her shifting psychological landscape, shaped by movement and self-reconstruction. Through the act of making, she sought to pause the external journey and redirect attention inward—toward the delicate shifts within—opening a way of seeing closer to what might be called a “topography of the soul.”
