Stranded Angels

2025

Inkjet print on dictionary paper, hairnets

12cm X 20cm

Stranded Angels documents Florence Lanxuan Liu's 2024 odyssey through Xuchang, China—the global center of human hair trade. These black-and-white photographs dissect the wig industry's hidden veins: mothers weighing their braids at market scales, workers stitching beauty into synthetic wefts, and mannequins whose wigs vanish toward horizons they'll never glimpse. Printed on dictionary paper as fragile as the stories it carries, the zine becomes an elegy for the stranded—those caught between rusted machinery and the world's insatiable hunger for perfection.