Irene Cheung first discovered photography when she started shooting with her mother's old Topcon camera in high school. After endless hours in her high school’s darkroom (converted out of the art room’s bathroom), she was unofficially "recruited" as a photo editor by Amherst College, where she became a familiar fixture on the sidelines at sporting events and around campus. To this day, her images occasionally appear as "File photo" in The Amherst Student.

As a former chemistry major, Irene is drawn to the granularity of her environment, capturing textures, shadows, and reflections and their interplay with their immediate surroundings.