I think my post will show how different we really are as people.

I also believe that it should be completely open ended. My side will include language as well. I just need more time to think about this. Of course I have ideas in my head, I just need to develop more. I need to go out to your house without a camera, and develop my train of thought to be able to better see what my final outcome is going to be.




In many ways, I think I will limit myself more than you. This isn't because of the subject matter or the project in general, but more so in terms of who I am. I find it hard to focus when the books are too large, I need something more specific to focus on.

Self portrait might be included in the work. For some reason, it only seems fitting.

I'll probably take a photo or two of your father and mother as well. I hope they are prepared for that.

I think summertime is almost perfect. I'll get to go inside that house and feel what it feels like to not have a central unit for air conditioning.




A really good word I thought of.

TRANSCEND.

For some reason, I found this word really fitting into our situation.




Homes, our most intimate of places.
Home Towns, a place one finds identity geographically and culturally.




I also want to limit myself geographically to your neighborhood and home.




The biggest hurdle I have to overcome is how I will specifically represent you. A photograph of a photograph of you is an obvious cop out way to do it. But I want to find something much more vast in value than that. I also don't want the photographs to feel like you have left the place. I hope you understood what that meant.




I think it's interesting that we have this concept of a hometown. There has always been a diaspora for people and their hometowns. Most eventually leave. Yet of course there will always be memories, friends and perhaps even family. But hometowns, much like basic emotions such as love, really have no practical purpose in terms of self identity. Yet is the biggest influence on us as humans. How is a hometown beneficial to us in terms of practicality? There really aren't any reasons. But that's not the point. It's such things that make us human. To love, to belong are emotions that we all strive for in our lifetime.

It's also interesting to note that we, ourselves will one day possibly settle in on a place that we will eventually call home. If you or me were to have offspring, we create a hearth for new lives of the world, thus another hometown. It's really unbelievable for us humans to find and relate to this idea of a place of belonging. It's beautiful.




I'll also be shooting some in black and white. I don't know, maybe all in black and white. I just have to go see and feel.

In many ways, I don't think medium is really that important. It's really not. Of course it is an aid to visually, audibly to guide us into understanding what we are trying to do, but in the big picture, it's just a tool. I think we really need grasp that. I think you know this already. You do know this already.



We'll see.

entry one point zero

[shannon]

oh my god! someone made a blog for us to write to eachother.

we should probably use it.

if i must.

:l


so i was just dreaming, and typing whatever made most sense.
it might make sense to you, if you take the time to read thru.
its okay if you dont.
i just getting stuff on 'paper' you know
i hope you dream and express it to me somehow, so i know along what lines you - are - thinking.


PHOTOGRAPHS OF HOME [working title/subject to change]





"i think the photography show that tom and i create should be like this:



it should be in all formats
it should include language
it should include sound (in partial)
it should be personal and express who we are thru one another
the show should inform others that we do not yet know eachother, but would like to, thru imagery

...we will explore eachothers space and material expressions of past life

i want to shoot with the hassleblad
i want to shoot portraits and maybe from a helicopter, that would be cool and i doubt it will happen but if it doesnt ill settle for a boat
i want to shoot colors and colors and colors and i want to share them without any objections
i want to shoot humorous street scenes
i want to shoot the cityscape from tsim sha tsua, but unlike how others shoot cityscapes because postcard photos are annoying
i want to shoot with 35mm right before it rains as i stand outside and focus my camera on the passers rushing by as they notice me, Not. (as they do not notice me)
i want to catch the disgust that this hot rain evokes, over exposed, blurry and expressively so
i want to express, thru these pictures that this boy, tom, came from a busy place
i want his images to express the simplicity in my upbringing
i want those two worlds to diverge
interrupt one another
and express
quite possibly
the paradox we also find in friendship and in curiosity
in appeal and loss
which loss, i mean?
the loss we feel when we know we've quickly made unimpressionable contact with someone that could likely change our life, but the soil dried up in the sun before we could ever think of planting an olive tree.
which might someday grow branches.

i want to photograph myself somewhere, not facing the camera
i want to find a quite place, in hong kong, somehow
photograph silence with attitude ( i assume if there is silence in hong kong it has a backbone and a reason)
i want to ride a bike and think about the fact that maybe he once did, here
i want to make a paper boat and set it sail into his past
i want to write on the paper boat, things that might have mattered back then, to a small boy living here

i want to use all of the public telephones in sheung wan because maybe he once used that telephone as a child and it is the only thing still, in the same form, standing there today

i dont want to use all of the public telephones because of the swine influenza

i want the viewers of this show to inhale his pollution and exhale my breeze
i want the viewers of this show to inhale his current stability and exhale my knocking knees
i want the viewers of this show to hear the metro lady say, "please mind the gap"
on repeat
on repeat
on repeat
in three languages
in three languages
in three languages
i want my images to repeat, repetee, repatatto
in three languages
three languages
three languages

i want to shoot mostly in color and square, but leave it open

i want to take an image here in hong kong...and try not to think of him because i dont really need to channel this person that i don't even know
but - forgetting the intent behind each image (for this show)- might be a struggle because its a struggle that he and i have invented for ourselves to explore, independent of one another.

i want to celebrate the fact that we can't explore this place together and inject that interest into my images
i want the space that we have our show to be comfortable, as comfortable as our lives are currently (be that plush, or otherwise edgy)
i want to individually create the invitations to this show
i want the walls to be quite clean, as well as the floor
i want to begin this project with this email and end this project with a similar stream of consciousness email
i want to find a photograph of a human, on the street side and bring it home to put it in the show
i want to scan some of my paintings and include them
i want to really, care, about this project/show we are dreaming up


i want to take photographs of Hong Kong...
for the next month and i want them to simultaneously reflect years and moments of life, which belong to my twenty year old American self AND not all of the small korean boys who grew up in hong kong, but just one."