Retro Nuosu: Reclaiming the Past, Present, and Future through Participatory Portraits in Southwest China

This article explores visual and ethnic representation among Nuosu Yi youth in contemporary China, where photographic subjects’ desires and agency compete with mainstream visual regimes. I argue that Nuosu Yi university students used self‐fashioning and photography to create a new yet radically retro narrative—one that asserts their political and cultural modernity in the Chinese national imagination. “Art photo” studios have recently inspired youth to express themselves through a markedly retro Nuosu aesthetic. In this project, I replicated an art photo studio and photographed fourteen individuals, revealing their individual desires and agency in the broader context of Chinese ethnic representation.