About
Founder
Zikai Chen is a Montreal-based photographer, originally from Shanghai, specializing in fashion, portrait, and fine art photography. With a multicultural background shaped by both Eastern and Western influences—as well as extensive travel—he brings a nuanced understanding of people and environments to his work.
Zikai blends technical precision with creative vision, leveraging meticulous planning and dynamic lighting techniques to deliver photo shoots that are both efficient and impactful. His professionalism and artistic sensibility consistently earn high praise from clients and collaborators alike.
Driven by a strong sense of style and a deep sensitivity to visual storytelling, Zikai infuses each image with emotion, atmosphere, and narrative. His unique perspective and refined eyes reveal unexpected dimensions of his subjects, inviting reflection, curiosity, and connection through every frame.
Artists
Although I prefer not to focus on the word immigration, it’s undeniable that since I arrived in Canada in 2019, the rhythm of my life has shifted dramatically. Before that, I was based in Shanghai, my home city, but my experience studying abroad and my love of travel had always kept me drifting between places. Now, here in Montreal, I find myself slowly sinking in.
It felt like the moment a light is switched on, my image and my consciousness became fixed in this unfamiliar city. There are moments of despair, when I question why I must speak French, or even English; when I feel frustrated by the constant need to translate in my head before I can speak. As winter gradually descends upon the city and all the vivid seem to disappear, while myself thinking about the city skyline of Shanghai beyond Huangpu River…
But yet, somehow, from the nothing, some people and some moments began to gather around me, giving shape and color back to my world — Photography is a part of those.
This book traces the moments I’ve captured from five years ago, when I first picked up a camera in Canada. It is a collection of still frames filtered through my own view and emotions: fragments of a life being slowly rebuilt, one image at a time.
This example website features work from the following photographers:
Annie Spratt
Austrian National Library
Boston Public Library
Markus Spiske
Marjan Blan
McGill Library
Museums Victoria
Pablo
The New York Public Library
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