A traveler returns with photographs.

A resident accumulates an archive.

After twelve years in Shanghai, I found myself with more than 200,000 images and the persistent belief that one day I would have the time to go through them all. That day never quite arrives.

Instead, I revisit the archive in fragments. A few folders at a time. Small excavations into a city that shaped a significant part of my life.

What I have come to appreciate is that photographs often need time. Distance removes the immediacy of memory and allows the images to speak for themselves. Pictures that once felt ordinary reveal new layers. Others become records of a world that has already disappeared.

This selection comes from one of those journeys back into Shanghai.

Shanghai, China.