UnderCurrent

UnderCurrent is a photobook by Taiwanese photographer Yehlin Lee set along the Zengwen River basin in southern Taiwan. It traces the spirit that keeps flowing beneath the land: folk faith, rituals, shrines and graves, plants, scars, blood and the river itself. Published by Akaaka Art Publishing in 2026.

The story behind the book

In a landscape covered by modernization, Lee turns his eyes to what still breathes: spirit-medium rituals, small shrines, cemeteries and the memories carved into the land. These are not shown as ethnographic records. They rise quietly as an invisible current of life. For Lee, an undercurrent is not only water underground. It is also the pain and prayer passed down through generations, and the unseen time that ties people to land.

While photographing, Lee realized that his own life had been shaped by the same hidden current. The book records that change in him as much as the place.

What is in the book

• Photographs that answer one another across the pages and build a flow of meaning
• Hardcover with Swiss binding

About Yehlin Lee

Born in 1976 in Taipei, Lee studied electrical engineering in Taiwan and completed a post-graduate diploma at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in France. He worked in sound art from 2001 and turned to photography, self-taught, in 2011. His work is in the collection of the Art Bank of Taiwan's Ministry of Culture.