Photography between feeling and meaning

 

 

The story behind Anna Li Photography

The beauty of what is

My practice sits somewhere between abstract feeling and a search for what connects us more deeply to being alive.

My path into art started practically. About twenty years ago, I chose web design because it gave me both things I was drawn to: making something beautiful and organizing complexity until it made sense.


In 2015, abstract art became another language for me, a way to work with feelings I couldn't always put into words. Around the same time, I began a much deeper process of self-discovery. Over the years, that grew into my philosophy of authorship, which now shapes the way I live, create, and understand my own choices.


Photography had followed me for years before I understood it mattered.


I had always been fascinated by photographs, particularly the human body in art, while having a complicated relationship with being photographed myself. For a long time, those two things existed separately: admiration for photography and discomfort with my own image.


That began to change after I moved to Canada in 2022. Without thinking of it as a practice, I photographed sunsets, places, and small moments that made me happy. Then, as I rebuilt my relationship with my own body, I began taking self-portraits.


Photography became a way of noticing. My body, my home, light, movement, ordinary life, fleeting expressions. 

In 2025 I bought my first camera, switching from mobile photography to a "serious" one. I now take hundreds of photographs on an ordinary day.


What keeps drawing me back is not perfection, or even the subject itself. It is the feeling of the moment.


My self-portraiture remains its own ongoing practice of self-discovery. My work with other people grows from a related curiosity: what can become visible when conversation, attention, and photography meet?


I see a person as a whole work of art. I am interested in the texture of their presence, the small gestures and unplanned moments through which something true becomes felt.


Photography, for me, is a way of paying close enough attention to notice the beauty that was already there.


In a way, through my practice, I want to help others see the beauty in themselves the way photography helped me see the beauty in the body I once rejected and in the world around me.

 

It started as my personal path to self-discovery and evolved into a practice of noticing beauty in every story.

 

 

I love meeting people just as they are, without requiring them to become anything first. What brings me the most joy is seeing people do what they love. There is always a light in their eyes that I can't help but admire.

 

 

 

 

Anna Li, a portrait photographer / philosopher based in Vancouver, BC

 

 

 

Falling in love with everyone I meet, while capturing the beauty of realness, honesty and true self.

 

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Social Media

 

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Other photo projects

Facts about me

I have 20+ years of experience in

tech, user experience design, team and product leadership

10+ years of experience in

life + career coaching, mentorship and consulting in creative industries + tech

photography for me is

The way to integrate my ability to see beauty in all people with supporting their true expression

10+ years (+ my whole life)

building philosophy of Authorship: living beyond your history or fears

Written 10+

Workbooks on living, working, and relating beyond fear and historical patterns

I dentify as

She / Human

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