Traces of Echoes・Breath ｜ Fine Art Photobook
“Traces of Echoes・Breath” is a developing journal by visual artist Liao Wen-Hsuan, documenting her three pregnancies. By capturing the echoes of light and sound, the work visualizes lives once lost and lives ultimately born — light’s reflection brings form into being, while echoes become the resonance of memory and emotion. The flame of life cuts across the timeline; sound drifts through empty space, weaving together chapters of loss and rebirth.
Pregnancy comes with deafening physiological upheaval and a self-consuming emotional intensity — igniting, rising, blossoming, or simply carving a long scar in the dark. Within these private experiences, a fated ending, the birth of a life, and the silence of will continue to sway deep within the artist’s memory. These experiences do not unfold in sequence; they return, overlap, and reconstruct themselves again and again.
/ Binding & Layout Design /
The book is bound using Swiss Binding, allowing every spread to lie completely flat when opened.
The outer case is designed as a string-tied file folder, symbolizing the sealing and archiving of the artist’s lived experience. The three loops on the case correspond to the three lives she once carried — intertwined and bound to one another, forming a shared fate, each holding equal, irreplaceable weight within memory. Untying the loops and opening the folder becomes a ritual of revealing and reading the artist’s private journey.
Inside, the three pregnancies are divided into three journals, paired with the artist’s own writing to add deeper layers of meaning. Different paper stocks let readers intuitively sense, through touch, the themes of each stage and the complex feelings the artist struggles to put into words.
First & Third Journals: Charged with shock and pain, these use the coarse-textured Heng Cheng Jinwen paper, its roughness carrying the friction of life itself.
Second Journal: Recording the joy of birth — a relatively gentle passage of time — these use the smooth Heng Cheng Ningxue Yinghua paper, conveying purity and warmth.
Second Half of the Third Journal: Echoing the theme of “echo” itself, these pages use the fine-textured Rosa paper, with margins on all four sides evoking the composition of a remembered film scene, fixed in place with silver ink — a design suggesting the artist mourning a life lost while cherishing the presence that once arrived, allowing what has passed to keep flickering in the dark.
Vertical Typesetting: To match the wavering rhythm of “echo” and the visual image of falling fireworks, both the Chinese and Japanese text are set vertically. The Chinese–English edition retains this feature as well, keeping the Chinese text vertical to preserve the quiet stillness of reading.
/ Cover Design /
This book aims to reveal what lies beneath the beautiful collective imagination of pregnancy — issues rarely accommodated, and hardships rarely spoken of.
Outer Cover: A soft pink-orange Japanese Sato-gami paper is used, its gentle touch and tone symbolizing the maternal instinct of carrying life within the body. Printed on its surface are the artist’s own stretch marks — rendering the irreversible physical toll of pregnancy in a tender color palette, creating a visual tension between softness and truth, hinting at the weight and honesty within.
Inner Cover: A rough-textured black Boshi paper alludes to ultrasound imagery and the artist’s own womb, revealing a journey filled with questions and struggles too complex for words. The moment readers open the book, it is as if they step into a womb formed by this black paper, confronting the shock of life’s coming and going head-on.
/ Appendix /
At the back of the book is a small card printed with thermochromic ink. In the language of life, dandelions carry endless blessings and prayers, symbolizing longing sent far away. When readers press their palms together in prayer and warm the card with their hands, a hidden image slowly emerges — three dandelions transformed from fireworks, each representing one of the three children the artist has carried in her life. Through the reader’s body heat, private mourning is transformed into a gentle wish, allowing love and blessing to hold steady, quietly, between two palms.
Printing Method |
Digital print, 4-color + silver ink
Author (Photography & Writings): Wen-Hsuan Liao
Printing | Sensations Print
Book & Editorial Design | Sheri Lai Design
Art Direction | Hsu Wu-Te
Production | Lab Cherry Wood