Yolanda Y. Liou - Thank you for playing with me

“Thank You For Playing With Me” dives into researching the concept of modern beauty, documenting portraits of Enam Ewura Adjoa Asiama and Vanessa Russell from 2019 to 2022. This book is an intimate record of that journey.

The expectation of being skinny as the standard is relentless in Asian beauty culture. I’ve experienced the stress of this from a very young age. In 2019, when I was thinking about this body image topic again, I came across Enam’s Instagram profile. I was taken by her confidence and charisma.

Suddenly, it clicked; I’m a photographer, I create images. Images don’t create me.

I collaborated with Enam and Vanessa over the next three years, we went on the journey of transformation personally and collectively, finding our own feet in the world, career changes, and moving cities, grieving the lost ones and celebrating the new life - sisterhood, womanhood, and motherhood.

It's a call for us all to play, to be human, and to celebrate the unique beauty that resides within each of us.

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"Her work seeks to create a safe space for women of different body types in a world that seeks to punish them. By flipping the narrative, the photographer artfully and courageously shows that in a culture that engenders self-loathing on the path to ‘perfection’ – nothing tastes as good as radical self-acceptance." - i-D