the last post

*Books will ship in December

the last post compiles the last photographs shared on social media by individuals who have passed away, accompanied by text detailing their images and deaths. It examines the aesthetics of vernacular imagery and explores perspectives on mortality and life, while investigating how images circulate in the age of digital sharing.

This book is deliberately structured as an incomplete, tactile puzzle: it consists of 50 images re-photographed from illuminated screens, each with a corresponding text piece. Half of the book presents a sequence of images that invite ambiguous, fictional narratives. In contrast, the other half contains only text that reveals the true stories behind each photograph and death. The book’s unique mirrored structure—where the first photo corresponds to the last text piece, and vice versa—requires the viewer to actively navigate between the two halves using small navigation markers on each spread. This design ignites touch, interruption, and attention, foregrounding the book's physicality and pacing as an experience that emerges only through direct engagement.

By separating images and texts, the book creates distinct layers of fiction and reality, forming an intimate zone of inquiry in which readers can explore the mysterious connections/disconnections between the depictions of life and facts of death and construct their own meanings as they flip through the pages.

Tianqiutao Chen is an artist and educator working in China and the United States. He received an MFA in Photography and an MA in Art + Design Education from Rhode Island School of Design. Chen’s work has been exhibited widely, including at the Photographic Center Northwest (Seattle, USA), Center for Photography at Woodstock (Woodstock, NY), Modern Art Oxford (Oxford, UK), Minsheng Art Museum (Beijing, China), Sarajevo Photography Festival (Sarajevo, BiH), DongGang International Photo Festival (Yeongwol, South Korea), and Copenhagen Photo Festival (Copenhagen, Denmark), among others. His work was selected for the 2022 Critical Mass Top 50 and the 2025 URBAN Photo Awards Winners Shortlist for the Projects & Portfolios Category. His photobook won the 2017 Lucie Photo Book Prize for the Independent Publishing Category.