Li Xuan loves storytelling and strives to be a photojournalist who moves the needle forward. She is passionate about serving her community and hopes to amplify the voices of people who are vulnerable or marginalised.

 

She is currently a photojournalism master's student at the University of Missouri. She is a coordinator for the College Photographer of the Year (CPOY) competition, the world's largest collegiate photojournalism competition. From 2022 to 2024, she also volunteered as a coordinator for three editions of POY Asia which celebrates Asian photography and storytelling. For the 76th edition of the Missouri Photo Workshop, she was part of the team that toned and printed more than 400 images for the exhibition under the guidance of New York Times photo editor Jennifer Mosbrucker.

 

After graduating from university with a Bachelor of Communication Studies in 2022, she had a two-year stint as a breaking news journalist for The Straits Times — Singapore's English-language national broadsheet. The most-read newspaper in Singapore, both in terms of print and digital, it reaches 1.33 million people every day. Aside from local news assignments, she pitched articles daily, produced multimedia packages, photographed and filed stories on-site for breaking news events, live-blogged, posted wires as a copytaster and cobbled news articles together from foreign sources.

From November 2021 to February 2023, Li Xuan produced a photojournalism project about mental health titled “Fighting Demons”. It is an intimate portrait of Ashley Poo’s relationships – with friends, family and herself – and how they intertwine with depression and anxiety. In 2022, the photo essay was published by The Straits Times. That same year, she received the Objectifs Documentary Award in the emerging category for the project. Under the mentorship of documentary and portrait photographer Muhammad Fadli, she expanded the series for her first solo exhibition which was held at Objectifs in 2023.

In 2022, Li Xuan was one of 100 selected for the 35th Eddie Adams Workshop, a merit-based, four-day photojournalism seminar. In a day, she produced a photo essay about Denise and Rob Lombardi who had quit their jobs and moved to Hurleyville in upstate New York to be closer to their son Rj. He is an energetic 18-year-old who has autism and lives at The Center for Discovery. The essay was edited by mentors Mary Calvert and Wong Maye-e.

In 2021, Li Xuan interned at the Singapore Press Holdings as a photojournalist. From sport to portraiture to spot news, she was exposed to a wide range of assignments. Her photos were published in every major print newspaper in Singapore and picked up by international outlets including the Associated Press, NBC News, Yahoo Finance, Gizmodo and Forbes.