The title of this project is 云淡风轻. The societal/cultural issue I want to explore with my photographs is ancient Chinese hanfu and the isolation that this dress represented in the past. I want my audience to feel and understand the sadness of being trapped like a bird in a cage, which was the reality for many Chinese women in history when hanfu was required dress. I want the audience compare this isolation and repression women experienced in the past to the freedom they have had when they were little. I will get inspiration and develop my ideas by looking for photographs that depict a feeling of abandonment and sadness while also having a lot of elegancy and composure represented in the figure and the composition. It will be important for me to find ways to contrast sadness with elegancy, not only in the figure’s expression and posture but also the visual elements I arrange in my composition, including light and shadow as well as texture and negative space.