Conversation

Emmanuel Levinas, a French philosopher, states that Other, dissimilar and incommensurable to oneself, appears to one as a ‘visage’. Though the manifestation of Other’s visage, both natural and inevitable, could seem to one as an unilateral intrusion, it establishes a passage to transcend the outer world from the enclosed inner self as the subject that perceives and embraces the visage. One, therefore, is completed from the responsibility and understanding of Other, ultimately finding one’s true self.

The photography project ‘Conversation’ is a journey that begins from concerns of acquaintances, eventually finding oneself in the process. In the photographs, the space becomes the world where one encounter the Other, and the cloth tossed into the air becomes the medium that draws out one's relationship with Other. Other, as an unsubstantial light flashed into space, actualises when the visage materialises onto the aimlessly tossed cloth, and one’s act of capturing the moment signifies one's conversation with the Other. One finds one’s essence through Other, not just an illusion of light, but as a real existent materialised on a white cloth.

Created by Jeong Wonjun