With Blank Notes, photographer Marshall James To signs his first photo book, an intimate yet universal work that weaves together family memory, Taoist rituality, and diasporic identity. Growing up as a second-generation Chinese immigrant in a rural area of Canada, To carries with him a dual belonging: on one hand the everyday life of a family restaurant, on the other an imagination populated by beliefs and spiritual presences that, in Taoist tradition, constantly coexist with the physical world.

The project takes shape precisely in this suspended space, where the visible and invisible realities brush against one another. The images become testimony to the subtle threshold that separates the living from the dead, the natural from the supernatural, Western culture from Eastern culture. In the seventh moon of the Chinese calendar, when the gates of the afterlife open and the “Hungry Ghosts” return to earth in search of nourishment, To’s photography evokes both the sense of festivity and the danger that accompany this ritual. It is a visual narrative that combines celebration and warning: move with respect, because the ghosts are hungry and the threshold is fragile.

Printed by Charcoal Press, Blank Notes comes in an edition crafted with great attention to detail: 144 pages, soft cover, matte paper, and black edges hand-painted. More than a simple photo book, it is an object that embodies the dialogue between worlds and generations, between cultural heritage and personal research. Through these images, Marshall James To builds a bridge between visible and invisible, inviting the viewer to reflect on what remains, on what returns, and on what never stops accompanying us.