DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

STILL LIFE

This series of monochromatic photos captures basic elements of painting and drawing. When I took these photos I was in an Introduction to photography and had more experience with drawing and painting which informed the principles of this project. Composition and color are the fundamentals of these disciplines and I wanted to give a playful spin to something aesthetically pleasing.

To me this series is documentation of who I was in a specific period of my life. The subject matter consists of objects in my immediate surroundings at home, many of the objects seem mundane and are essentially unimportant, but they represent a memory and state of mind, capturing a sense of nostalgia. This series invokes the feelings of living in my first rented home with my close friends, and it reminds me of how I was exploring my identity and taking steps as a young independent person through observing the materials around me and finding connections. I thought about what objects I deemed as meaningful and started off with a pair of traditional Korean slippers I wore as a child on top a floral comforter that belonged to my grandmother. 

Other objects you will find in the photos: a broken mold of my teeth, a hand-me-down bong, a traditional Korean bag I only used for Lunar New Year money as an infant, an old mirror I took from my mom’s vanity, a cheetah-print hookah I got at a yard sale, an English Dictionary I found among my late grandfather’s collection of several other dictionaries in different translations.