Ueoka was born and raised in Tokyo, later relocating to London, then Paris, while Li lived in Japan, the United States and China before moving to Paris to study. Both have remained in the French capital. Displacement sits quietly at the centre of the Asia publication\u2019s formation. Reflecting on its influence, Ueoka notes, \u201cWhen you live abroad, away from the country where you were born and raised, you\u2019re inevitably forced to confront your own identity. This was a feeling I never experienced while living in Japan.\u201d Physical distance, he adds, has allowed him to re-examine his background and sparked a desire to learn more about Japan and Asia. For him, the publishing project is a means of discovery \u2013 a way to encounter an Asia he doesn\u2019t yet know through the eyes of others.<\/p>\n
Beyond limits and labels, Ueoka resists defining Asia as a fixed idea. Instead, he and Li aimed to expand the reader\u2019s own internal image of what the continent is and what it might become. This openness is reflected in the publication\u2019s sequencing. Paging through issue one, we begin in 1984 with Martin Parr\u2019s first visit to India, where observations from a local school are interwoven with candid, technicolour portraits and black-and-white images taken in Darjeeling. We then move through time to an unpublished dummy book by Alec Soth<\/a>, created in Hokkaido in 2016 as a tribute to the Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase<\/a>, and onto Farah Al Qasimi\u2019s ongoing exploration of Dragon Mart in Dubai, the world\u2019s largest Chinese shopping and trade centre outside of mainland China.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe intersection of different timelines is one of the core concepts of this magazine,\u201d says Ueoka. \u201cWorks that have stood the test of time, pieces that still feel relevant and \u2018good\u2019 long after they were shot, possess a certain strength. At the same time, I want to utilise the inherent immediacy of photography. It\u2019s interesting to feel the passage of time by looking at the \u2018then\u2019 and \u2018now\u2019 of the same region.\u201d<\/p>\n Likewise, the decade-spanning images gathered across the publication\u2019s 280 pages never submit to a single theme, instead creating a field of relations between past and present, locality and circulation, intimacy and distance. By embracing plurality over a singular narrative, Ueoka\u2019s deliberately non-didactic editorial approach successfully undermines any notions of an authoritative gaze.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/a>
![\"Asia](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/468007.jpeg\")
Asia PublicationPhotography by Xiaopeng Yuan<\/p>\n
![\"Asia](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/468016.jpg\")
Asia PublicationPhotography by Alec Soth<\/p>\n