After picking up a camera ten years ago in Japan, Chieska Fortune Smith started a relationship with photography that allowed her to engage with the world in an entirely new way. “Photography, for me is medicine,” she says. “I’m quite introverted and being behind the lens is a way for me to engage and express everything visually without saying a word.”

Fortune Smith initially caught my attention with a recent editorial for Beauty Papers. The shoot, created in collaboration with renowned hairstylist Teiji Utsumi, is a fusion of Chinese and Japanese style and culture. “We were informed by Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love, big wigs and my old photographs of my Japanese grandmother.” The images are disarmingly beautiful, both timeless and effortlessly modern.