TOKYO-2017

Void

  • Photographer
    JunYoung Jang

This home is my home, but this is not my home. This place is my place, but this is not my place. I am this person, but I am not. The individuals in my photos are symbols: each one contains a void. They are strangers in New York; their feelings are unfathomable. But in their appearance, I glimpse the void. I recognize it because of the void in me. Why do they live in this city of relentless competition? Why have they come to a different culture, a different society? How can they endure their difference, their sense of being always outside? Can the void enrich them or will it overwhelm them? Nothing is guaranteed. Photography is the medium of appearances, the medium of illusion and the gap between what can be seen and what can be known. In a portrait, the subject looks at us but does not look. She displays everything and reveals nothing, no emotion, no existence, no past, no future, no memory. We see but cannot see.