in progress (2023~)
너는 너가 귀신인 줄 모르고 (가제, 그림자들 헤아리다 지문이 거멓다 Part II)
Several years ago, I decided to close out nearly two decades abroad and return to my home country. I found myself standing in front of boxes packed with tens of thousands of printed photographs, feeling utterly at a loss. I had to reduce the volume. For several weeks, I worked through what to take and what to leave behind.
Among the unpublished work, certain photographs caught my eye with unusual persistence. They had always been nearby — but they needed a long time before they would speak to me. As countless others were torn apart, I gathered the ones I simply could not destroy and looked at them together. It occurred to me that these might be images that had sensed, in advance, a time not yet arrived. The gaze that had long looked toward death was now turning toward my own. I may have been looking ahead — before the fact — at the time that would come after I was gone.
That feeling gathered itself into a single question.
When the time comes — when I die — will I have images to hold on to? Will there be something to look back on as I leave?
Holding that question, I decided to return to the places that appeared in the old photographs. I wove together the images I could not tear — that long-held gaze — with what I saw anew upon returning, binding them into a single rhythm.