John Shen's artistic practice explores the nexus between image and object. Born in China but raised in New Zealand, Shen’s multidisciplinary approach to making spans Photography, Painting and Performance. His ongoing project Straw Inscriptions features handmade cameras constructed from drinking straws. These experimental cameras are crafted to produce one-off direct positive photographic objects, capturing moments of love, intimacy, and affection of his closest friends and family. Each camera used in the Straw Inscriptions is tediously assembled by hand gluing approximately 28,000 individual drinking straws. By intentionally forgoing any optical elements Shen embraces an exclusively analog approach to photography. Through this research, Shen complicates the contemporary obsession with “ultra-resolution” and “image fidelity” by questioning its ability to convey the depth of a human being’s interior subjectivity.