BLINDNESS (2024 work-in-progrress)
Blindness can take many forms. Physically, it is the affliction of being born sightless or losing sight later in life.
Figuratively, one might think of Milton’s darkness visible, which the poet uses to describe the hell which awaits Lucifer when he falls from grace.
Blindness can also be a self-inflicted punishment, as in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex who puts out his own eyes to atone for an unspeakable sin.
Saramago’s epic novel opens at a traffic light, where the first victim of a mysterious pandemic suddenly loses the ability to see. Chaos quickly ensues and then proceeds to engulf the city, bringing society to the very edge of cataclysm, only to lift again suddenly and inexplicably.
More broadly, blindness could refer to the human condition: to the ability to see but not comprehend. Think of a newly arrived immigrant unable to read or speak the language of her new home, trying desperately to navigate and adapt to a different culture.
In creating this body of work, I took steps to make my process more arduous and tentative than photography usually is, like a blind person stumbling in the dark. I first disabled - and at times modified - my equipment to strip away the advantage of its technological prowess; also I often worked in near darkness, where even the act of seeing became difficult. My lighting technique highlights the tactility of surfaces. Unlike a photographer, who builds meaning based on visual pattern, a blind person largely relies on the other senses to know the world.
This series is driven by the consciousness of a nameless drifter, making his way through the streets of Seoul. Every photograph is a question mark which makes him pause and consider an object up close, trying to decipher its meaning through such changing emotions as anxiety, curiosity, fear or desire.