A non-linear meditation on memory and change, Perfect Brightness, Eternal Spring explores a century of change in China from the perspective of a single family. My grandfather, Li Zhujing (李著璟), serves as the central figure of this narrative. Born in the early years of the Republic of China, he lived against the backdrop of societal upheaval while working as an engineering professor at Tsinghua University for over 40 years. As he approaches 98 years of age, tasks that rely on short-term memory have become more difficult. My grandfather, a meticulous record-keeper, digitized hundreds of family photos and arranged them into a slideshow. The images, which span four generations, play in an hours-long loop on a television above the kitchen table. Despite his age and short-term memory difficulties, my grandfather can recount the finest details of the stories behind each image on the screen when prompted. I learned Mandarin as my first language, only to slowly forget it as I assimilated to life in suburban Tennessee. The principle of linguistic relativity argues that language influences its speakers' worldviews. As such, I always felt as though pieces of myself remain locked away in the memories of a language that I cannot comprehend anymore. Putting together this visual record helped me understand part of my family’s history, and my own. In full, this series consists of 26 images, a nod to my grandfather’s birth year of 1926. Half of the images are original photos, taken on my first trip back to China since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The other half of the images are archival family photos, many of which play in my grandfather’s slideshow. The series, sequenced in alternating pairs, connects the past and present and illustrates the impact of China’s modernization on the individual and the family unit. A self-published book version of the series was exhibited at the Rehearsal Art Book Fair in 2023. For the Urbanautica Institute Annual Awards call, I have created a new selection and sequence of eight original images and four archival images.