People with their eyes covered touches an elephant and describe their own interpretations. Even a single photograph, when perceived through different contexts, can give rise to varying interpretations.
When I visited a cave created in a scenic spot, I saw people bending down as they moved inside, and it reminded me of Plato’s allegory of the cave. If the world above ground symbolizes the “true world,” why do we, living in that world, seek out constructed or artificial environments? The pursuit of the unknown may, at times, lead us to the “known,” yet we remain drawn by our longing for the unknown.
I feel that my own work has some kind of relationship with “tourism,” though I cannot be certain whether this connection truly exists. This realization prompted me to begin exploring, through photography, the relationship between myself and tourism.
Using photography as a means to allow for multiple interpretations, I aim to explore the intersection between everyday life and creative practice, and to reconsider visual experiences in daily life.
Shortly after the news of the release of treated nuclear wastewater was reported in 2023, friends from my home country repeatedly sent me related videos and articles. Among them were pieces of information which the authenticity was uncertain, and I felt the necessity to interpret them considering their sources and backgrounds. However, my friends argued that "not everyone should think that way, nor is it certain that they do." This difference in perspective sparked my interest in the diversity of interpretations and the inherent fluidity of perspectives.
One day, when I looked at a developed negative film, an image appeared that immediately evoked a "landscape" that wasn't actually captured in the photograph. This made me realize anew that our vision is always mediated by culture, memory, and social contexts.
Photography, within certain contexts, may seem like a mere repetition of the same image, but it draws out different interpretations depending on the viewer's perspective. In the interaction between "seeing" and "being seen," meanings shift fluidly, and I have been creating a series that incorporates these uncertain and ambiguous visual experiences as its core elements.
2024-2025
2024-2025
My family home was situated in a tourist area, a place thoroughly reshaped, where even the faintest traces of the past could easily be erased. Through photography, I sought to uncover what had once existed there. Centering on my family, I began to walk along the paths my parents likely traversed, extending outward in all directions. From their stories, my imagination spread into the real spatial environment, searching for points that might exist—or might not. When the existence of what I imagine is uncertain, I feel I am, in a way, searching for the non-existent. Photography has the power to render the invisible visible, and I hoped to use it to give presence to that which otherwise remains absent.
2020
Objects carry the traces of use, care, and abandonment, preserving histories that continue to evoke memory, imagination, and curiosity. Even after the objects themselves disappear, the marks they leave behind reveal the passage of time and the interactions they once witnessed. Photography becomes a medium to explore these relationships between production, consumption, and perception, tracing both what is visible and what lies beneath the surface. Everyday behaviors—earning, saving, acquiring—can be seen as responses to the unknown, yet the significance of these actions remains uncertain in an unpredictable future. Through the persistence, transformation, and reinterpretation of objects and images, the work invites viewers to reconsider the ordinary, to engage with the passage of time, and to reflect on their own act of seeing.
2023
As a creator, my attachment to each finished photograph varies, and there are times when certain images are simply forgotten.
When I organized photographs that had never been published, I realized that some were overlooked because the focus at the moment of capture did not land where I intended. By revisiting these images, I reconsider the reasons for their initial omission and actively work to ensure they are no longer neglected. When taking snapshots, we are always drawn to something, yet what is overlooked is also taken—captured by the photograph itself. Many of these images became blurred due to the use of zoom lenses on mobile cameras. Precisely for this reason, one of the distinctive features of photography—the way it reveals what can be seen through the “mechanical eye”—becomes more pronounced.
In post-production, I cropped and emphasized the portions that were originally the farthest away. Unlike painting, which can be shaped largely according to the artist’s intentions and remains a subjective fiction favorable to the creator, photography involves a mechanical intermediary, and I consider the presence of a “mechanical eye” as a kind of third party. By incorporating additional subjectivity, as in painting, I can extend the time that photography often compresses, and attempt to reclaim aspects of the image that might have been overlooked or neglected.
2020