Yang Li and Antoine d'Agata: Too Much But Not Enough

Those who shine through the darkness are the brightest stars. - Yang Li

Too Much But Not Enough is an avant-garde fashion publication by Yang Li and Antoine d'Agata, consisting of 23 LP album covers and booklets, visceral portraits of 23 women they encountered throughout China. Since launching his eponymous label in 2012, Li has drawn on underground and sub-cultural references to create a darkly romantic aesthetic. For his very first campaign he contacted photographer Antoine d'Agata, and together they shunned professional models, instead taking to the streets where they approached over 300 women from vastly different walks of life to capture their stories in image and word. "There were some really compelling moments," Li recalls, "and the tears and anguish you see in the images are totally real." The photographs vibrate with a confronting physicality; while the intimate texts, transcripts of the subjects' own voices, touch on themes of self-knowledge and beauty, love and disillusion, personal freedom and social constraint. The volumes are housed in a slipcase that has been distressed by hand with tape-a final expression of the individualist, counter-culture spirit of the project.