In the series The Lingerings, Jiang Pengyi enacts a dual reconfiguration of photographic temporality and the ontologies of existence. By eschewing the anthropocentric convention of "instantaneous capture," the imaging process is reduced to a purely material transaction—a self-generative occurrence between light-sensitive film and biological specimens unfolding within the void of darkness.

Heat typically hastens the dissolution of substance. However, through a process akin to ritual burning, these butterfly fragments transcended nothingness. At the very edge of irreversible decay, life persisted as invisible light, etched onto film. The positive prints reveal a hazy bleeding of emerald and violet—the lingering breath of a form passed away. Within the negative’s absolute gloom, broken wings intertwined with plant fibers like neural networks, holding onto the stubborn embers of a life that will not go quietly.

Rejecting the erasable nature of digital data, Jiang Pengyi grounds his practice in the logic of the negative—a realm where the unseen remains present. He perceives the human subject as a pending photosensitive surface: a site of physical recording where real-world interactions manifest as a series of non-retractable chemical inscriptions performed in the absence of light.