[Unstagram] The Day Songs Fell Like Rain

When the hand trembles, the photograph retains traces of that motion.
The photograph is filled with opposites of the trembling world.

Small things change quickly, leaving clear traces that easily alter their original form. Large or dark things, even when shaken, do not disappear so easily. From the perspective of light, dark things leave no trace at all. Even in the midst of motion, there are moments of stillness-some things blur, while others remain. Coincidence works together with the laws of nature, and even coincidence requires a certain degree of inevitability. A touch of necessity for visual plausibility. First, there is what is present and its given state. Whether this presence is intentional or the result of being swept along by inaction, stories emerge from what can be said simply because it is there. A blurred gaze and a trembling hand are also perspectives in themselves.

The rain falling from the night sky drew a musical score. (Seoul, 2018)

When everything is harmonious, one does not take purposeless photographs. This is because the defensive wall against seemingly meaningless expressions is too solid. In fact, its solidity leads to seeing too much, while hidden things go unnoticed. In a state of exhaustion or intoxication, paradoxically, one finds a reckless energy disguised as the urge to pick up the camera. It becomes difficult to know or care whether a photo is being taken or not, or whether one is being photographed. There is little awareness or attachment left toward existence or the world. In the space between visible things, the self is absent, and only the relationships among those things remain. Time is filled with inaction, with nobody rushing in or asking questions. The boundary between fact and non-fact also becomes a meaningless, drifting expanse.

Seoul, 2018

Unconscious trembling. The boundary between substance and illusion disappears, and awareness of both motion and stillness fades away. These are moments perceived unconsciously. A photograph speaks not only of the facts that existed but also of the forms and shapes that were present. The rules that exist in the world are set merely by the horizon of human thought, yet it is easy to think that blurring violates the forms that once existed. The relationship between large, dark things and small, bright things tells of different spaces and times simultaneously within a single photograph.

Flowers Bloomed on the Kyobo Bookstore Building Wall. (Seoul, 2018)

Things that are invisible or appear contrary to convention are difficult to accept as fact. Things that are visible are easily accepted as fact, either as they appear or as one wishes to see them. It is true that we see things as we want to see them. When someone claims to see the invisible, it presupposes an unusual, exceptional state. Perhaps the moments when many visible things disappear from our attention and only what remains becomes clear can also be called seeing the invisible. To see is not an act of vision, but of consciousness. And it is 'time' that mediates between the invisible and consciousness.

Seoul, 2018

Heidegger wrote that the meaning of the existence of 'what exists' is 'time.' Rather than the materiality of being, he regarded the state of being-in-the-world-that is, 'Dasein'-as an essential concept. He said, 'Our eyes are not eyes that see only what is given. They are eyes that already interpret. There is a perspective behind the eyes that manipulates interpretation. That perspective is precisely the perspective of existence.'

Seoul, 2019

In blurred photographs, many things rush in, rush out, brush past, or float by. Within such photographs, not a single thing remains still. Songs fall from the sky like rain, and flowers dance on trembling walls. All things in motion tell us that everything in the world is floating on time. Or perhaps time is the only thing that all things in the world are upholding. Time reveals its existence by doing nothing, by being non-existent among all things that change. There is nothing that can definitively be called fact, but neither can these things be dismissed as mere illusions. Amidst a world of illusions, only the photograph tells the truth-or perhaps the opposite. It is an unreal, mechanical, photographic reality, drawn as it appears, as it trembles.

'The photograph is a quotation' (John Berger). Seoul, 2018

The hand trembled, leaving drawings in the photograph. The trembling of the hand was the opposite shape of the drawing.
Such things fill the photograph.
The opposite of the flower, the opposite of people running toward you, the opposite of trembling, the opposite of the road,
The opposite of you, the opposite of the world, and the opposites of myself...

Editor's NoteThis piece reflects on photography, visible things, the passage of time, and the relationship between humans and these elements.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.