Adam Han-Chun Lin: Sonder

Adam Han-Chun Lin: Sonder by Vicente CayuelaSeptember 19, 2025

Adam Han-Chun Lin captures the quiet intimacies of masculinity at home with a medium-format camera, rendering them in a nostalgic palette that recalls the hues of 1980s and early 2000s Taiwanese cinema. Now based in London, the young Taiwanese artist grew up as the only queer boy in a household of brothers and twelve male cousins, where gestures of closeness and distance shaped his understanding of masculinity. In Sonder, his ongoing project, those memories resurface as staged-like tableaux of men in domestic spaces, which he produces collaboratively with the multiple families he puts under the spotlight. In this interview, he discusses his fascination with the tender, solemn, and sometimes awkward ways men show closeness (or don’t), and what it means to create work that does not seek to define masculinity so much as complicate it.

Portrait of the artist.

Adam Han-Chun Lin is a Taiwan-born photographer and visual artist based in London. Working across portraiture, fashion, documentary, and collage. His practice explores intimacy, masculinity, family, queerness, and cross-cultural identities through ongoing experimentation.

Having grown up attending public schools in Taiwan and spending his young adulthood in the West, Adam’s work is deeply informed by the dialogue between East and West. He creates images that blur the boundaries between genres, combining documentary realism with reimagined narratives to investigate identity, vulnerability, and belonging. Adam’s process involves layering cultural histories, personal memory, and social expectations, especially focusing on rigid masculine norms. Having grown up with 2 brothers and 12 male cousins, he draws on the lived, vulnerable experiences that challenge and expand conventional ideas of masculinity.

Since graduating with an MA in Fashion Image from Central Saint Martins in 2024, his work has been featured by Wepresent, It’s Nice That, AnOther Magazine, and 1Granary, and exhibited internationally, including at the Paris Ass Book Fair at the Palais de Tokyo, Battersea Arts Centre. His clients include AnOther Magazine, Conde Nast GQ, British Fashion Awards, Gay Times, TANK Magazine, and the Council for British Archaeology. A finalist of the Hyères Festival 2025, Adam continues to develop his practice as an emerging artist, pushing boundaries in contemporary photography.

Instagram: @adamlinhc

Sonder

Sonder explores masculinity through the lens of domesticity, focusing on the relationships between male family members and the spaces and objects that shape their everyday lives. Set between London, UK & Taichung, Taiwan—two culturally distinct cities that have shaped my own identity—the project examines how masculinity is expressed, negotiated, and reimagined within the family home.

Often coded as a feminine space, the family home contrasts with traditional masculine domains like workplaces or sports fields. By centering the domestic sphere, the series challenges these binaries and reveals how care, intimacy, and vulnerability can exist within male relationships behind closed doors.

Blending documentary and staged approaches, I worked collaboratively with multiple families, using the home as a stage to explore the line between the natural and the performed. Everyday objects, clothing, and gestures become vessels for personal, familial, and cross-cultural heritage.

Sonder invites reflection on how masculinity can be soft, relational, and emotionally expressive. The title Sonder, the realisation that each passerby lives a life as vivid and complex as your own, encapsulates the project’s ethos of universality and shared human experiences, emphasising how personal stories resonate across cultural boundaries and invite collective reflection.

What have you learned about masculinity in this cross-cultural project?

I’ve learned that masculinity is intersectional and deeply shaped by social, economic, and cultural conditions. Even within the same family, masculinity is expressed and defined in very different ways by different family members. It’s easy to assume similarities within a shared culture or household, and imagine differences and contrasts between different cultures, but when I compared families in London and Taichung—two cities nearly 9,000 kilometers apart—I found unexpected parallels. Some were visual and physical, like household objects and gestures; others were emotional, like the coexistence of distance, tension, and unspoken comfort.

This project also made me reflect on my own role as the photographer and facilitator, how speaking Mandarin in Taiwan or English in London shifted my presence and the way I directed or connected with people. For me, Mandarin carries the rituals and manners of growing up in Taiwan, while English feels tied to the independence of moving to London at 18 without my family. I first started photographing the families in London with a genuine curiosity because I’ve never lived with my family in London, and I actually expected the images from both places to look very different. But when I laid the images side by side, I realized both languages, both versions of myself informed by East & West, coexist within me. That realization broke down my own assumptions and clarified what I was trying to express—the emotions, dymamics and togetherness between men that transcend languages and cultural differences.

Has the perception or performance of your own masculinity changed since you began working on this series?

Yes, this project has given me more confidence in expressing my own masculinity, especially within my family. I grew up surrounded by boys, with two brothers and twelve male cousins, and as the only queer person, I was always conscious of the disparity between how they showed intimacy and how I imagined masculinity could be and how I operate outside of my familial relationships. That difference often felt isolating, because while I had reflected and intellectualized these ideas, my family didn’t necessarily share the same experience or vocabulary to engage with them.

Through Sonder, though, I was able to open conversations we might never have had otherwise. Their responses to the images gave me new insight into their perceptions of masculinity, even if at times they didn’t fully understand mine. That exchange helped bridge some of the distance, and I hope it gave them a glimpse of how I see the world. Sharing this project publicly has also been affirming and heartwarming. Hearing from people who connected with it made me feel less alone and reminded me that these vulnerable explorations resonate beyond myself.

You have a unique aesthetic — particularly through your use of color. How do you achieve these hues, and how long did it take you to find your “voice”?

My relationship with color has always been intuitive. I think of it almost like a system: connecting people, the clothes they’re wearing, and gestures to the spaces they inhabit. Because I trained in painting before I began photography at 18, I think that’s where I developed my sensitivity to palette and composition.

In Sonder, lighting was key to creating a muted yet cinematic atmosphere. I used studio lights in everyday interiors, aiming for a slightly surreal quality, something between reality and performance. I use a continuous light, so it’s interesting because it’s almost like I’m literally putting my subjects in the spotlight whilst prompting them to interact with their family members in front of the camera. Some families embraced that element naturally, while others were more awkward, and I find both so deeply human and fascinating. I’ve always been drawn to the colors of 1980s and early 2000s Taiwanese films themed around family dynamics, often slightly overlit on film, which gives them a dreamy, heightened tone. Shooting on medium-format film reinforced this aesthetic. I have collaborated with around 10 families in total, and at first, it took 3 shoots with the same families to refine the balance of color and light, but once I found it, I knew it felt true to the project.

How much planning goes behind each photograph?

While I naturally like to plan, this project required flexibility. Most of the families I photographed weren’t familiar with modeling, and since family homes are such private spaces, I often didn’t see their homes until the day of the shoot. My process usually began with spending time together, building trust, sharing stories, before discussing ideas and moving objects, adjusting interiors, and staging moments that echoed each family’s rituals or memories.

I often have to make intuitive decisions on the spot, but it’s guided by very clear references in my head, from movements, poses, or scenarios from my own family history. Then it became about finding which gestures or arrangements resonated with that specific family’s personality and dynamic. In a way, the spontaneity became the plan.

What has been the biggest challenge or realization you’ve had working on this series?

The biggest realization was learning to trust my intuition and not over-intellectualize. Before starting, I immersed myself in theory-based research on cross-cultural masculinity, queer theory, and localism. But I found that when I leaned too heavily on theory, the images lost some of their emotional immediacy.

Through this process, I learned to loosen my grip and let the camera guide me toward visualizing feelings and the complex, sometimes uncomfortable emotions that resist being pinned down by language. That’s what excites me about photography: its ability to hold contradictions, complexities, ask questions and speak to emotions too big or subtle for words. When I respect the medium, it surprises me with the most rewarding outcome. This project clarified both the kind of work I want to make and the trust I need to place in my own vision.