Crystal Hua (b. 1998) is a contemporary photographer based in London, England. She captures portraits, particularly self portraits, and still lifes in staged compositions to navigate questions about the body, metamorphosis and psychological experience. Hua works predominantly in traditional darkroom processes, layering textures, paints, etchings, bleach and ink. The imperfections of the craft – blurriness, missed focus, over and underexposure, grain, flaws in the emulsion – are amplified rather than avoided, rendering images suggestive of an indistinct recollection; a fading memory marred in the process of re-creation. Hua’s work often recalls historical imagery, writings and ideas in an attempt to dialogue with those that came before her, while also adopting narratives that are deeply personal. Her preoccupation with self portraiture, where the body is portrayed in manners that both perform and subvert its own objectification, reveal her practice as one of contemplation and catharsis. The viewer is positioned as complicit, a voyeur in a private theatre of pain, pleasure, depravity, comedy, grotesquery, beauty, absurdity, illusion and dreams.