The Macau Series was photographed in 2013 using my trusted Fuji X100, capturing a city shaped by a distinctive fusion of Portuguese heritage and strong Chinese cultural inflection. Reached directly by boat from Hong Kong airport, Macau immediately reveals itself as a place of contrasts—between historic streets and hyper-spectacular developments, between colonial memory and contemporary consumption. The series moves through the historic downtown, where Portuguese pavement—calçada portuguesa—and ceramic tiling articulate streets lined with modest homes, outdoor eateries, and quiet corners of everyday life. In one side street, a bride poses for photographs, while nearby cafés such as Café de Nata offer the city’s famous egg pastries, reinforcing the lingering Lusophone presence within an unmistakably Chinese urban environment.

These intimate scenes are juxtaposed with the monumental architecture of Macau’s casino landscape: the Venetian Macao, the City of Dreams complex—featuring a floating mermaid within a vast aquarium—and the striking lotus-shaped Grand Lisboa. The Ruins of St. Paul, packed with visitors, mostly Chinese tourists, act as a symbolic hinge between these worlds, while night markets animate the city after dark. Throughout the series, ordinary lived-in homes—some aging, some historic—stand in contrast to the theatrical scale of the casinos. Together, the photographs capture Macau as a layered city where colonial traces, local life, and spectacle coexist in a dense and compelling urban collage.