Self-taught, Beijing-based photographer and creative director Huang Jiaqi takes photos of freedom. Often turning the camera on himself, Huang’s work plays with bondage, liberation and self-expression. His series be your own light saw the photographer suspended and bound by ropes, sometimes against white backdrops, sometimes hanging from cranes. Huang’s other projects have played with similarly kinky imagery: plugs in mouths, lamps carefully covering a model’s genitals, bodies contorted. These arresting images ask where our boundaries lie, why we let go and how we stay in control.

Born in Chengdu, Huang never studied photography or art formally, instead choosing to follow his own path. His work, which often merges fashion and tech with the aforementioned erotica, has been recognised throughout the world; most recently, Huang was chosen by the British Fashion Council as one of their 50 New Wave talents. In 2019, the photographer partnered with Dazed and Burberry to make a piece of work which responded to the ideas of boundlessness, weightlessness and freedom. “I always wanted to fly,” Huang told us then. Two years on, it seems like he’s done nothing but soar.

Text Katie Goh