Faith in everyday life stands apart from the weighty meanings and historical frameworks often emphasized by scholars. It is concrete and fragmentary, stylistically diverse, governed by its own self-defined rules yet often loose in principle. In the hometown of photographer Lin Shu, the community’s need for faith has long been interwoven with the rhythms of everyday life—eating, drinking, sleeping, and other mundane necessities. Seemingly ordinary, these practices nonetheless cast a distinctive undertone across daily time, tinted by an ineffable spiritual intensity and a lingering sense of mystery.
Beginning in 2020, Lin Shu turned his camera back toward his hometown in Fujian. In a time shaped by ongoing uncertainty and sudden interruptions, he abandoned preconceived ideas and confronted his subjects through direct photography. In the instant the shutter is released, he captures moments already slipping away, using the act of looking back as a form of self-reflection in the present. Having long lived away from home—and once eager to escape it—Lin encounters his hometown now as something partially obscured. From a small deity statue hidden in a dim mountain-top shrine, once too intimidating for him to meet as a child, he senses a vastness beyond cognition. And through the characteristics of Fujian’s folk beliefs—where humans and deities coexist, and all things are imbued with spirit—he comes to recognize how his place of origin has quietly shaped him.
The editor of wû sín, Yida, also hails from Fujian and shares this background with Lin Shu. Her focus turns to the dialect they have in common—an ancient language that remains active today in folk songs, religious rituals, and other forms of everyday spiritual life, sustaining a resilient vitality. Selected words and phrases are inserted among the photographs. Image and text do not correspond directly in meaning, yet are closely attuned beneath the surface.
