Olga Morozova - Artist Post # 11

Janice Chung

   1)      Korean-American photographer Janice Chung was raised in Queens, New York. One of her works is called “Please come back soon” in which she presents her first journey to the homeland of her parents, South Korea.  For this series Chung used Mamiya II film camera photographing spontaneously rather than making her subject pose. The artist admits that she is inspired by what is around her and prefers natural light.  

   2)      Chung’s work is very personal. Even though she grew up in a completely different environment, in the United States, she finds out that Korean culture she discovers while traveling in South Korea is not foreign and distant to her. She demonstrates the customs, the food culture, the household, its members and relationship between them. She also discovers there was a part of her mother (who she traveled with) that she never got a chance to know: A part that belonged to the past life, to the country her mother grew up in.  

   3)      I’ve been thinking that our liking or disliking of a particular picture is similar to how we experience a book or a movie for example. Same as when we read a book and we like a story it describes, we like a picture that speaks to us, that tells us a story. The more it is something familiar or somehow reflects our life experiences the more is the chance for us to like the work of art whether it is a movie, a book or a picture. I am not sure how much of artistic value those pictures would have had for me without me having an experience of living in South Korea for several years. Maybe they wouldn’t have. However these images are very familiar and emotional for me: the culture, the way of life. I can understand the concept behind this work. It is very personal experience of the artist, but at the same time it is also public. The work belongs to public because it tells us about the difficulties experienced by so many people nowadays like cultural displacement; desire to reunite with one’s family and at the same time the opportunity to rediscover the roots and a true self.