Yuanjun Chen: Most of My Works To-Date
📍 PETSHOP — 2727 N. 62nd St.
📅 Opening Reception: 8.1.25
🖼 On View Through: 9.20.25

I moved to Omaha in 2018 for college and left for Chicago in February 2025. Initially, I didn’t expect to stay here for more than three years. Things happened, and it ended up being a six-year journey.

Thanks to my father, who enjoys photography and collects film cameras, I started photographing with film in 2012. I spent a lot of time walking through the cities of Guangzhou and Hong Kong, mostly shooting color negative and digitizing with a scanner or camera (so they are not darkroom prints—yet). My guilty pleasure is hoarding old film cameras and making photographs with them. I enjoy photographing, developing, and digitizing my black-and-white negatives, which means sometimes I don’t see a photo for years.

I lived most of my life with my artist parents in Guangzhou, China, and photographed my surroundings with film from 2012 to 2018—until I moved to the U.S. I studied printmaking and art history at UNO and graduated with a BASA. I kept photographing but often didn’t know what I was photographing most of the time. I didn’t have much access to the images, so I didn’t get to show much of my work.

Now that I no longer live in Omaha, I can see my work more clearly, and I really want to show you some of it—some of my personal favorites from 2012–2025. Many of these photos will be shown to the public for the first time.

Part of the 12th Annual New American Arts Festival.

More information at bffomaha.org/naaf