2026 Verant Richards Award recipient Carson Weifenglong Yang presents Loved, Accepted, Seen, a series of protective objects given by friends on his birthday, alongside letters they wrote him. Developed through his experience of living with leukemia, the series explores how care, love and vulnerability can take material form. Yang’s photographs of amulets and correspondence transmit quiet, focused presence alongside larger narratives of friendship, memory and survival.
Carson Weifenglong Yang is a Toronto-based Chinese Canadian photographer and artist working across portraiture, conceptual and documentary photography. His practice is grounded in a close attention to emotion and feeling, how they are expressed, perceived and carried between people. Rather than seeking agreement from viewers, Yang creates images that invite reflection on the self and the changing world around us. Drawing from Eastern philosophical and spiritual traditions, his work considers the subtle relationships between human experience, perception, nature and everyday life, opening a quiet dialogue between the image, the viewer and the world it reflects with care, vulnerability and presence.
