Grandmother: A Series in Ten Parts

#Spotlight

Filmmaker, Photographer based in Los Angeles, California

Grandmother: A Series in Ten Parts

Winner of the 2022 YoungArts Competition in Photography
Selection exhibited at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California

Photography helps me to distill an understanding of myself and the people around me to present a compelling view of the Korean-American experience.

I am a third-generation Korean-American living in Los Angeles, which has a sizable Korean population. However, growing up, my life has been primarily defined by mainstream American culture.

I was drawn to documentary photography as a way to investigate how this dual experience shapes my view of the world around me. For me, photography is a mirror that allows me to rediscover myself and my personal heritage through my surroundings and relationships.

My series explores my pieced-together and evolving relationship with my Korean-American background through my interpretation of my maternal grandmother.

My grandmother immigrated to the United States in 1964, moving frequently throughout the East Coast with her husband and three daughters.

Shortly before I was born she moved to the neighborhood where my parents live in Los Angeles, and as a young child I spent many weekends and afternoons in her house.

Even though I saw her often enough, we were separated by language, lifestyle, and technology.

This project is my attempt to peer back through the window into my grandmother's life through the use of film photography, and in the process discuss the authenticity of documentary and the constant evolution of personal culture.

I want to interrogate the inorganic gaze of the lens, the constrictions and divisions implied by the frame, the veracity of documenting a way of life you're not sure is yours.

I want the viewer to feel at times like an outsider, an investigator, and a family member in my grandmother's sphere.

Lastly, I want to explore the definition of identity through the life of a person who is helping me decipher mine.

During this project I began experimenting with medium format film, first in black and white and then gradually evolving to color.

I found that while black and white drew attention to the form, I was more strongly drawn to the color that constantly accompanied my grandmother.

I wanted to capture the red pop of kimchi and bright Korean fabrics, the warm hue of her blankets and maps, her personalized wardrobe of vibrant hats and dresses, the candy-colored dumbbells and bright silicone buckets lying at the margins.

Color film uniquely captures the quality of pigment and light, and has a soft and layered quality that blurs the line between the past and the present, the authentic and the constructed.