Legend of Hydra

On jetlag and bucket-listing.

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October 27, 2016Hydra, Greece

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Undoubtedly, the most enriching part of my disparate portfolio of work is the degree to which I travel to far-flung corners of the Earth that I would never have visited but for a client wanting a particular shot of a particular building at a particular time of year, or their leather factory being nestled in the depths of a gloriously different world where people are kind and happy and have no locks on their doors. Even so, I’ve caught myself in the unbecoming habit of lamenting the woes of work travel. “I’m so jet-lagged,” I say, as if that’s news. Sure, work travel attracts a very different state of wide-eyed wonder to leisurely vacations – more of an incredulousness at how I am still awake after 30 hours in one position.

Justified.

But, since all the Christmas decorations are already out to play (and we may as well follow up with some 2017 New Year’s Resolutions while they’re still relevant), I solemnly swear that (I am up to no good and) I’ll look past the eye bags and back pains and twisted internal organs and inflamed ankles that come with two long-haul flights a month, and focus my attention on the bloody miracle that is jumping in a 500,000kg machine, and appearing on the other side of the planet, fairly unscathed. That, and the notion that even after the thousandth visit, there is still more to discover in any given city. Of course, this is easy to say in a blinding paradise

like Hydra, where the substantial part of this revelation was born of a conversation with Lily and our NY booker as we busted out this shoot in Greece for Michael Kors’ new fragrance (appropriately named Wonderlust). This millennial concept of bucket-listing has instilled in us a kind of impatience and quantity over quality. Instead of seeking discovery in newness, I quite like the idea of seeking out the newness in existing environments that one might have seemed so familiar – but you’d only scratched the surface.

Obviously, this entire philosophical musing occurred while Lily breezed around the island looking every part the ultimate globe-trotting babe, admiring locals in tow. No comment on my appearance.

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About

Margaret Zhang 章凝 is an Australian-born-Chinese filmmaker, photographer, consultant and writer based between New York and Shanghai. Since establishing her website in 2009, Zhang has gone on to work with global brands including CHANEL, Swarovski, YEEZY, Bulgari, Gucci, MATCHES, Under Armour, and Louis Vuitton in a wide range of capacities both in front of and behind the camera, while completing her Bachelor of Commerce/Bachelor of Laws at The University of Sydney. Zhang’s directing, photography, and styling has been employed by the likes of VOGUE, L’Officiel, Harper’s BAZAAR, NOWNESS, and ELLE internationally. She has been listed in Forbes Asia’s 30Under30 and TimeOut’s 40Under40, and her work has been recognized as shaping the international fashion industry by the Business of Fashion BoF500 Index for four consecutive years. CNN has identified Zhang as a leading fashion photographer in Asia and ELLE named her the region’s most influential digital voice. She went on to be the first Asian face to cover ELLE Australia. In 2016, she co-founded BACKGROUND, a global consultancy for which she specialises in Western-to-Chinese and Chinese-to-Western cultural bridging for a range of luxury, lifestyle, and brand initiatives. In 2017, she exhibited a series of 39 unseen photographic works as a solo show in Sydney, and premiered her first short film – a 15-minute exploration of her visceral relationship with classical music on both performance and abstract planes – to critical acclaim. In 2018, co-curated the first annual FOREFRONT Summit focused on inter-industry problem-solving at all scales of business. From this king summit, Zhang developed FOREFRONT+ – a round table series of candid conversations covering subject matters of universal concern. In 2019, THE FACE Magazine engaged Zhang as Creative-Director-at-Large for Asia for its relaunch. Zhang is currently working on her first feature film.