Ephemeral Ephemera
I started to collect stories of real events recently shown in the media. Certain slices of human lives became my materials. These photographs represent various events that occurred recently in the world, being transformed into representations in news media. Those stories disturbed me with their vile or tragic, and therefore hopeless atmosphere. Those articles are from daily newspapers and internet news released in the UK, and in South Korea, where I am from. Whilst keeping each story in my mind, I photograph various surfaces from my surroundings and alter the images digitally according to the narrative. Then I create three-dimensional photo montages with these photographic façades. They are temporary and fragile paper objects, ephemeral ephemera like our lives. I also demonstrate my personal interpretations while I make these stage-sets, I intend my images to hold the original context of the reality from which they originated, yet moulding a different level of meaning. For this, I put the original news headline as the title of image. It functions as trigger to stimulate spectators’ imagination on it. The stage-set itself is a temporary paper construction and the reality effect from built-up photographs only exists through the camera with a certain viewpoint and composition and eventually in the final image. These are ephemera, the “Items of short-lived duration, use, or interest” of ephemera, “a short-lived thing or something of no lasting significance.” Artist selected by Rhonda Wilson and Lorna-Mary Webb, project introduction text taken from artist statement.
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