Neverland

A selection of works from Ma Liang's twenty-year creative career as a renowned conceptual photographer, looking back at "Neverland" and pursuing the lost age of innocence.

Reality and fiction, absurdity and imagination—in Ma Liang's hands, photography no longer serves the purpose of reproducing reality. He uses photography to dream, drawing on innocence as a guide, and with dramatic tension, leads readers into the spiritual world he creates.

“We have all been there; we can still hear the sound of the waves, but we can never land again.”

—J.M. Barrie, "Peter Pan"

Neverland is a fictional island in J.M. Barrie's novel "Peter Pan," where the protagonist Peter Pan lives.

Neverland metaphorically represents everyone's origin, a spiritual homeland, a place that always exists but can never be returned to. It stores all our primal emotions, without moral judgment or social evaluation, embodying the purest human feelings.

Never-ending is the deconstruction and shattering of the innocent world, the frustration and collapse of youthful temperament, and the rejection and resistance against moving towards real-world experiences. All of this also presents a reconciliation that is peaceful, calm, and even mundane when facing the adult world.

Neverland is art itself, and its pursuit is a long and persistent process. You must believe in its existence to encounter it. This process can be quick or infinitely slow, and disillusionment is also a way of meeting it.

Never-ending is the balance point between all that the creator gains and loses spiritually. What you lose in reality, you gain in Neverland, and what you gain in reality, you also lose in Neverland. Neverland and the real world are two eternal forces that constantly ebb and flow.