Broken
New York, 2019
Her bright red sweater is draped over the chair. She’s left the desk, and, with it, her open notebooks. “Coming, is love, dad?” is written on the first line. “Dad, is love coming?” follows. A stack of thick books, and a brown Calvin Klein bag against their worn covers. In her absence, the letters lift and lilt, lending themselves to flux. How deep the Father’s love for us…But every punctuation, an uncertainty; every question, a cry. Do you love me?
On the adjacent library wall hang five portraits of five white men, two glaring toward me, the other three glancing inattentively. How is it that I feel the hard leather against my tailbone, the slick film of dirt on the wooden desk, the ache in my feet from walking the city’s avenues, yet feel no presence here? How can a jittery heart beat so voraciously, yet feel sunken so deep that shadows hide its very outline?Is it love? Love is not coming.
“Love, what are you talking about?”, she has written. “I don’t understand. Please love, speak clearly…”. The man across from me bites the nails of one hand while the other holds his fantasy book, his thumb holding his place. He’s on chapter two. His eyes too close to mine to properly meet. The woman returns; the man leaves. She is somebody’s child; he must be, too. But this library, on this avenue, in this city, is an orphanage. Every question on this street, a desire; every answer, a defence. I don’t understand, love.
I am caught between him and her. One leaves, the other arrives, but my constant is a prolonged departure. She continues to write in her notebook, and I try to ground myself in my body. Follow your breath and return to your body, I was told. The thoughts, the rumination, the constructed reality come and go like ticker-tape. Who gave her the golden bangle on her wrist? Who holds our hand when we need human embrace? Love?
Openings
Pyongyang, 2011
A few years ago, a friend said to me: “Your images are very lonely now; you pay attention to lonely situations and struggles. It’s a reflection of yourself.” While these words weren’t new to me, I didn’t think they were that visible, or intentional for that matter. He continued: “Your images give a sense [that] you are in a nowhere zone, like a lost child.” I asked him to explain. “Well, they are [a] little sad, to be honest.”
His remarks made me realize that my photographs have always been conversations, first and foremost, with myself. Just as there is no significant text without the author in it, no meaningful photograph is without its composer. The conversations are vulnerable, unguarded, and, with effort, open. They bear my mark, if not immediately visible, of intention, of emotion. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been hesitant to share many images, and seem to drag my feet when it comes to fulfilling requests; I’ve only recently started learning how to extend these conversations with others.
A trip to North Korea a few years ago helped to develop my lessons in the value of photography. While the country’s tumultuous history, human rights abuses, and longstanding totalitarian regime continue to propagate this image, it also serves to conceptually distance itself as an inaccessible place of secrecy and mystery, hiding, at its core, an undeniably human element.
The simple and fragmented images I took from North Korea were attempts to convey a sense of intimacy through distance. Rather than close-up portraits of people, I relied on the dispositions of everyday citizens filling wide, vacant spaces set against grandiose architecture to express the connections and disconnections of life in North Korea – the banality, solemnity, fear, joy, and humanity of life under challenging circumstances.
These images are of Pyongyang and its surrounding areas which service the nation’s powerful and elite and have been put on display for the outside world. They are, by no means, representative of life beyond these borders. Many photos, deemed politically sensitive or compromising, were deleted upon inspection as I left. Today the event reminds me of the value of experience and the ability of it to be shared.