Moments frozen in time

When the first exhibition was held in Beijing in 2022, some of the people in the photos turned up, while others didn't.

One white-collar worker, nicknamed Qiuqiu, couldn't make it as a result of the pandemic travel ban. Working in a State-owned company in Tianjin, Qiuqiu and her husband had their photo taken in a coffee shop in Beijing in 2015 shortly after getting married, and they gave Zhang permission to show their photos as a way of marking their seventh anniversary.

Now 36, Qiuqiu weighs slightly more than she did in the photo and enjoys married life. Over the past few years, she has been promoted from secretary to manager and while she used to be a perfectionist, she now takes a more relaxed attitude to work.

"It's like opening a time capsule, which takes you on a trip down memory lane. The photos have taken on a different perspective to when they were shot," Qiuqiu says, adding that this unpredictability is also what makes the project fun.

Once Zhang took the photos of the people, he stored the film for years until his first exhibition in 2022. He still remembers the excitement he felt the moment the faces in the photos were revealed in his darkroom.