Drawn by the work of famous photographers like Josef Sudek and Josef Koudelka, in 2021 Axel Ling (born in French Guiana and based in Hong Kong) made the decision to move to Prague to study photography at FAMU. Likening his time in the Czech capital to “a moth undergoing eclosion” in his afterword, Ling found himself on a journey of discovery. As he continued exploring the strange country in which he now lived – the country of his artistic heroes, nonetheless – Ling gradually rid himself of established concepts, preconceived notions as well as photographic and artistic frameworks that hindered his experience of the world. The high-contrast black-and-white photographs that make up his book “A Case of Eclosion” possess – despite their sometimes abstract nature – a remarkable human warmth and clarity. Rather than constructing a narrative, the book unfolds as a sequence of encounters, each image shaped by the openness with which it was made. “The 60 photos in the series are the traces left in the mental chess game between the infinite possibilities of the black box of photography and myself during the tangible, timid ime breaking the cocoon – the moment of growth as a photographic artist. May the work speak clearly for itself and for others who share a venturing spirit in the fields of photography and art throughout their lifetimes.”