Behind the Shadows and Symmetry

Over his four years at NYU Shanghai, Eric Ling ’20 developed a passion for photography, capturing everything from Shanghai’s urban landscape to snapshots of everyday campus life.

The Anhui native wanted to capture an intimate and unique portrait of NYU Shanghai. A selection of Ling’s photos were printed as postcards and tucked into graduation gift boxes that were shipped around the world to every member of the Class of 2020.

During his sophomore year, knowing he’d miss his home campus while studying away in New York, Ling challenged himself to capture NYU Shanghai in a new way--full of symmetry, shadow and light. “I wanted to focus on aspects of campus that we often ignore. It took me such a long time because I was walking around the building at day and at night trying to find different views."

"I started photography during my first year at NYU Shanghai because of a Global Perspectives on Society assignment. We were asked to take pictures of Shanghai and write a reflection essay. I found that I really enjoyed the photography, so I started to experiment.”

"For the graduation postcards, my friend Owen Zhang and I worked on a design for the 88 Days logo and we also put some lyrics of the Alma Mater on the back of the postcard."

“I hope that my photos can inspire other NYU Shanghai students. During this difficult time, taking the graduation photos was about showing our strength, that we are together even though we are not all physically together--our feelings and our strength unite us.”

“My favorite moment of that shoot was after we were done with all the shots, we all hugged and were discussing our futures, where we would go after graduation. That moment was really touching and emotional,” said Ling, who has plans to continue collaborative mathematics research with a professor at NYU in New York.

“I photographed Chancellor Yu just the day before he retired and I wrote about how he felt on his last day at NYU Shanghai. We walked around the whole campus. When we stopped by the library, I could see he felt emotional as he showed me a series of history books he had personally donated.”

“On the 15th floor, he showed us a photo gallery of our school’s history, from when the building was constructed, but I think his favorite part of that photo shoot was being in the IMA lab. He was very interested in 3D printing.”

“My goal was to show Chancellor Yu’s kindness and how he contributed so much to the school. I wanted to give him a memorable moment--to use my camera to record his history so that after he retires, he can look back on the photos and see his life and his work at NYU Shanghai.”