Image Only Curated by Huan Zhou at Verso Studio

Image Only is a curatorial proposition that centers the image as an autonomous site of meaning.

In the contemporary condition of visual saturation, photographic images are increasingly encountered as fragments—quickly consumed, endlessly circulated, and rarely dwelt upon. This exhibition responds to that condition by foregrounding the act of looking itself, returning photography to its most fundamental operation: sustained visual attention.

Rather than positioning images as illustrations of text or vehicles for narrative explanation, Image Only prioritizes the image as a self-sufficient presence. The exhibition framework deliberately minimizes interpretive mediation in order to create a space in which images can be encountered through duration rather than immediacy.

To dwell with an image is to allow meaning to unfold over time. Within this exhibition, viewing is understood not as a passive act but as a temporal and relational process—one that resists the accelerated rhythms of contemporary image consumption.

Image Only proposes a mode of engagement in which photography is approached not as content to be processed, but as an object of sustained perception. In doing so, the exhibition asks how photographic images might reclaim the possibility of attention, presence, and contemplation in an era defined by visual excess.

This thought-provoking group exhibition ran Nov1-Nov 29, 2025. Curated by Huan Zhou @joannejoe19, it was held at Verso Studio @versophotostudio at1308 Factory PI, Los Angeles, CA. 

About Verso Studio:

Verso Studio is an art-driven creative space where photography goes beyond simple images. With deep connections across the artistic community, our team transforms your vision into striking, fashion-forward visuals. Whether it’s a bold editorial concept, timeless portrait, or experimental shoot, Verso brings together artistic direction, professional production, and cutting-edge style. Our collaborative environment welcomes creatives from diverse fields, ensuring each session feels inspiring and innovative. At Verso, we don’t just take pictures — we create imagery that’s original, expressive, and unforgettable.

Participating artists:

Adrian Anguiano

Adriana DiNapoli: Adriana DiNapoli is a photographer, filmmaker, and poet. Her practice integrates analog and digital processes producing imagery with dreamlike, nostalgic, and vintage qualities. Grounded in both visual and literary forms, her work frequently begins with poems and prose that evolve into photographic, mixed media and moving image projects. Through a feminist lens, she examines human relationships, childhood, patriarchal structures, and the intergenerational traumas carried by the women before her. Her practice interrogates societal expectations placed on women while seeking to transform personal narratives into broader spaces of connection, recognition, and healing.

Chaska Jurado: Chaska Jurado is an interdisciplinary artist and educator from Lima, Peru. She is based in Los Angeles and is a recent MFA graduate from the Photography and Media program at California Institute of the Arts. She uses photography, video, sculpture, and installation to present visualizations of alienation and talk about uncomfortable silences — the quiet, transitional moments before and after significant events. Her work considers the intersections of bicultural identity, indoctrination, and misperception, focusing on building new worlds and systems of understanding.

Keni Li: Keni Li is a China-born photographer currently based in Glasgow, pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Glasgow. Li previously earned a Master’s degree in Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Edinburgh. The artist’s doctoral research explores photography, literature, and memory writing, with particular focus on photo-text, intermediality, women artists, women photographers, and cultural memory.

Junhui Luo: JunHui Luo is a film photographer based in Los Angeles, California, whose work explores the intangible presence of sound without source—a sensory dissonance embodied through self-projection within the natural world. He holds a BFA in World Arts and Cultures from UCLA.

Yiyi Qian: Yiyi always focuses her gaze on her relationship with society, reflecting on macro social phenomena through her personal experiences. The main medium used by Yiyi is photography. In addition, she has also introduced sculptures and films in her series of works, allowing her ideas to be presented in more diverse forms.

Tianrun Shi: Tianrun Shi is a Los Angeles–based photographer, image-maker, and spatial observer. He holds an MFA in Film from ArtCenter College of Design. His practice spans photography, moving image, architecture, and material language, emphasizing perceptual experimentation and the aesthetics of structural withdrawal.

Exhibited internationally, Shi’s work ranges from large-format 4×5 black-and-white photography to trichrome color-infrared series exploring urban ruins, nature’s return, and the philosophy of light. 

Influenced by Stephen Shore, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Richard Mosse, Shi investigates how the act of seeing transforms our understanding of space and time. His imagery often captures remnants of structures, fading traces of civilization, and the quiet intervention of light—forming a visual language that is at once documentary and detached. His work embodies an aesthetics of absence, stripping away symbol and function to reveal form as a temporal phenomenon.

He writes: “Images can be observed, but not grasped. In photographing, I try to let architecture’s ‘meaning’ retreat, allowing form to appear only as ‘phenomenon.’ Photography does not reconstruct reality; it allows seeing to become an awareness of impermanence.”

Jake Thornton: Jake Thornton's artist practice consists of using analog photographic mediums to document the world around him. The visual themes he often deploys are memory, identity, distraction, isolation, and irony. He is interested in how these themes play into the chaos of land development, societal structures, and day to day life. jakethornton.com

Haolun Yang: Haolun Yang is an interaction designer and artist, born in Beijing and based in California. He is deeply inspired by both Eastern Zen culture and Western modern aesthetics. His first nod from the photography world came as an IPPAWARDS Honorable Mention, for a photo he shot on an iPad 4 when he was 11.

Haotian Wang: A street-photography enthusiastic with a passion for capturing subtle beauty of everyday life and preserving meaningful memories through the lens.

Zhe Yuan: Tristan Zhe Yuan (b. 1997, Hangzhou, China) is a scientist and emerging artist based in New York City. Outside the lab, Yuan turns his lens toward the restless rhythm of New York’s streets — drawn to the city’s pulse, its fleeting gestures, and its quiet corners amid chaos. His photographs observe the everyday with precision and empathy, capturing the moments when the urban landscape reveals something unexpectedly intimate and alive.

Poster photo credit: Keni Li