~Silver Gelatin Prints~
Adjusting to the darkness.
All prints are printed with darkroom process.
Silver gelatin prints, fiberbased paper, 8x10
Project Journey(2019)_self-portraits
Everyday and every moment in the United States for the past three years have inspired, provoked my curiosity and passion and help seeking my voice as an artist.
During this journey, the photography is a special shelter where I can breath.
These self-portraits show my progress to find myself. Taking a self portraits has strengthened my self-esteem and also taught me how to love myself.
It was amazing experience to catch a moment of my life by myself. I learned how to be myself through these project, and I hope that more people have the chance to see themselves and find their inner beauty by taking a self-portraits.
All pictures are taken by using 10 seconds of self-timer and printed in the darkroom with fiber based photo paper.
Project Alien(2019)_self-portraits
Living as an “alien” in the foreign country makes me much more stronger.
At first, I did not like it to being called and referred as alien, but now I understand the specialty from being an alien;
therefore, I enjoy this “Alien Life.” Thus, I captured my alien life in the United States with my super Korean traits inside of me that follow me everywhere.
I have been living in the United States for three years as an international student from South Korea. During the transitional time to being a “successful international student” from Korean-Korean, I tried to act like American, to think like American, to dress up like American and to eat like American.
However, my twenty years old “super Korean” traits where are in deep inside of me randomly pop up while I faked myself as Ameircan.
I consider this as my strength, and I wanted to capture those my “super Korean” part in my American daily life. In all the pictures, I wear Korean traditional clothing, accessories, shoes, or items at the places that seems like super American. I did not dressed up fully because I wanted to show that just one or two part of my Korean trait pop up when I act like an American.
For example, the picture at the stop sign in front of the school, I am wearing Korean traditional clothing but with sunglasses, backpack with Converse shoes.
The differences that I have between American are non-fixable.
In several months, I thought my acting was perfect and successful because people like me.
But I figured it out that people like me not because I am “similar” to them, it because “I” am actually the good one.
Even though I dress up like super Korean or think like super Korean, they like me because they like my significant style and different ideas.