Preface of Memory: K’s Slides by Bo- yun, Jang (March 13, 2010) 
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Our poll "A photo essay always needs a great written story" closed. 267 people voted, 28% agrees, 72% disagrees. 233 people answered our follow-up question "Are you a photographer?" 82% indicated they are, 18% said no. Initially, negative answers to question #1 were almost 100% as was the pecentage of photographers among respondants. Then, when the level of non-photographers started to rise, the percentage of people indicating good text is always essential started to rise too. This seems to indicate that non-photographers think that adding good text to your photo essays is essential. In my opinion: if you want non-photographers to dig your work, you know what to do...
The work presented here began with my discovery of old slides in an empty house. The films belonged to a man who traveled around Japan in 1968. I named the man ‘K’, and planned a trip myself to the places K had journeyed 40 years ago. I referred solely to the notes written on each slides: they were about the places and people taken in those pictures.
I traveled to Niigata and Osaka in Japan, the same places K had been, for eight nights and nine days, and captured the different memories and flow of time between the two of us.
I attempted to describe the experiences in Niigata and Osaka in K’s perspective by setting myself up as ‘K’ and writing letters to myself.
I consider other people’s memories or traces as things that are ‘intact’ or ‘need to be reconstructed’. I structure them either by one-step-away approach or active participation, and add memories of my own so that they can be completed. I made the work look old and worn-out so that they could be seemed as K’s actual possessions.
The dates and specific facts that K had recorded on his slides did not act as a key to recall the complete memories of the past. Instead they allowed me to create new ones. My works aims to the reconsideration of disappearing things that are falling into oblivion, and emphasize the value of trivial things in our everyday life. I believe that the memories and the others outside of them all speak for the reason of our existence. Yet, the boundary between the memories and the outside is very much ambiguous. The memories made by humans lie in between reminiscence and oblivion. They are blended inside the vagueness and illusions of the past. I wish to talk about how ambiguous and abstract a specific event or the past is. The images and texts I reconstruct are my desired illusions of the past as well as an outcome of structuring other’s memories, and a revised world.
Weblink: jangboyun.com
Bo- yun, Jang (1981) lives and works in Seoul, South Korea.
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