Finding the unfamiliar in the intimate: Daniel Jiang’s surreal world

The night before his roommate, Simran’s, drag debut, the iconic rhythm of Prince’s Kiss shook Daniel Jiang’s tiny college apartment. The performance was months in the making. The star had pulled out all the stops, complete with a blowout. His curls bounced around the floor of their shared living room, and in the light of Jiang’s camera flash.

Tomorrow, Simran would perform as Miss Gender in front of an audience for the first time. But that night, the lively show was still an intimate experience shared between close friends.

“I didn't want him to focus on the camera,” Jiang said. “I just wanted him to sort of sink into his performance and feel the music.”

Later, Jiang surprised Simran with a photobook commemorating the moment his friend strutted into a new chapter.

Though his inspirations include fashion and editorial photographers, Jiang’s subjects are not models; like Simran, they are usually family and friends. Typically, they have never been in front of a professional camera.

Photography, for Jiang, is a way to connect with his loved ones. Though he aims to make them feel beautiful, he also tries to uncover a dimension of themselves they may not yet recognize or embrace.

His ability to create a comfortable, playful atmosphere allows his subjects to embody artistic, glamorous, and avant-garde versions of themselves.

“I'm always asking questions while we're shooting, just learning more about them, what makes them tick, what makes them comfortable, what makes them uncomfortable, and seeing where I can push them to grow out of their comfort zone,” Jiang said. “The beauty of photography is just being able to experiment and just try things and not be afraid.”

Jiang first practiced photography with a digital camera in high school. He learned to shoot and develop film at a campus art studio while studying computer science at UC Berkeley. Film challenges him to embrace spontaneity and to trust his instincts. These lessons have helped him develop the visual language of his moody, ethereal world.

“I've been able to let loose more and just go with the flow and be more about the movement and what we're both feeling in that moment,” Jiang said. “There's just sort of that special synergy that I felt when taking film photos that I didn't necessarily discover before.”

Jiang recognizes that his subjects' desires – to feel beautiful, to express themselves, to fulfill a creative vision – put them in a vulnerable position in front of the camera. Trust is key. It’s a responsibility he does not take lightly.

Jiang feels this vulnerability, on and off camera, is reciprocal. So is the support; in the moments when his self-confidence is shaky, it has been his family and friends, especially his sister, who have pushed him to leap.

“I'm not the strongest person to be able to create a concept and execute that and be really particular,” Jiang said. “I just go in with what I'm feeling in that moment or what I'm doing with that person at that time. And we create from there. I'm inspired by the interactions I'm having in those moments.”

His photoshoots, one-on-one affairs, are usually accompanied by music. The details, props, poses, and even costumes are often collaborative, spur-of-the-moment decisions.

Once, a college friend, Marissa, came to him with an idea. She had just bought a pair of pastel blue tights. “Let’s just do something with that,” she told him.

She showed up to his apartment with a bag of clothes, accessories, and makeup. The pair experimented with potential stylings before landing upon a frosty eyeshadow, pale green slip, and the blue tights. Jiang found a white sailor hat lying around the house to complete the look as Marissa posed in front of his mint green bathroom tile.

Besides his friends, Jiang is inspired by the lush natural settings of California, from the redwoods to the coast. He often shoots at night with brilliant flash, incorporating features like flowers, rocks, and seawater to exaggerate and abstract the human body.

One theme he is drawn to repeatedly is anonymity. He finds moments when his subject’s face is obscured by shadows or behind their hair, or when their gaze just misses the lens. He focuses instead on finding emotion in the body.

The result is a tension between the natural and the supernatural, the human and the alien, the real and the surreal.

“It forces me to, or forces the viewer maybe, to inspect more on the forms and the shapes that are taking place and how we interact with our environments,” Jiang said. “Adding that level of playing with lighting, for example, playing with the flash, adds an element of eeriness.”

Jiang’s place behind the camera creates another tension in his work. Though these shoots are whimsical, shared creative efforts, his subjects appear alone in the frame.

Jiang’s upbringing, as a gay Chinese-American kid in a city with a relatively small Chinese diaspora, informs how he portrays his subjects and the private world they share while shooting.

Growing up in San Marcos, Jiang was one of few Asian students at his high school. His extended family and his father lived in China. Being in the closet only deepened this feeling of being an outsider.

“I'm really familiar with that experience of isolation and feeling alienated,” Jiang said. “I think it's maybe reflected in the work that I do.”

Moving to the Bay Area was a good kind of culture shock. Suddenly, Jiang was surrounded by a community that understood and accepted him.

Jiang moved back to San Diego last year with new confidence in his creativity. He’s been exploring the landscape of his childhood with fresh eyes, open to wherever and to whomever the future of his art takes him.

During his final semester at Berkeley, he met up with a friend from home whom he hadn’t seen in months. It was a windy day, and they spent it outdoors, enamored by the swaying of tall grass in a field.

“We were talking about some tough subjects, you know, our future, what we wanted. It was a really calm environment to be in,” Jiang said. 

Jiang was finishing up a darkroom class and had his camera with him. When they came to a tree trunk in the middle of that field, his friend sat against it, her hair catching the breeze along with the grass.

With one shot left on his roll of film, Jiang snapped the photo. 

“It was just bringing that vision into life and bringing it into something tangible,” Jiang said. “Enjoying the piece that came with that is really, really special.”