The Shadow Means It’s Real
The Shadow Means It’s Real, is an exhibition that collects ideas on mending shattered pasts. Together with their collaborators, HHP revises archived histories of their heredity, pursuing healing work for survival. With this thoughtfully curated experience, they take you on a journey trough ideas and concepts that oscillate between the loss and finding of home. The phenomenon of the in-between is unfolded with expressions of the flowing duality of hands, hearts, and homes.
Awaken your kin as they prepare us for the happy rebellion.
The Shadow Means It’s Real is an exhibition that took place in the winter of 2019 in the Stevenson University School of Design Gallery, in Owings Mills, MD, USA.
-homie house press
page 27: I won’t let you down
The day I finished reading “The Shadow Means It’s Real”, I found a lost USB drive in my camera bag. Lost doesn’t necessarily mean lost, since I have found it, just that I forgot it existed.
That night, I went through all the photos and documents I’ve forgotten in the back of my mind, and ended up sobbing in bed. My friend, Akki, who came on this road trip with me, hugged me and comforted me, told me it’s ok to remember.
One of the folders in the lost file was called “Mexico”. Last time I was in Mexico City was about 4 years ago in winter. These photos in this file are what I found in my “Mexico” folder, that links my memory while I read through page 27, “I won’t let you down”. Our Lady of Guadalupe is a “must see” for people passing by/living in Mexico City. I saw it on my second visit to Mexico City.
Looking back at all my pictures in the folder, I came to realize that I was playing the role of an observer from an early age. The moving walkways were the only way to see Our Lady of Guadalupe, I guess it was to prevent people from lingering too long and creating equal opportunities for everyone to see it. While moving past the portrait, I remember standing below it, but didn’t even look at it properly, instead only took a photo of nothing but the cloth underneath. I guess I didn't know what I was looking at since there were language barriers and I personally don’t have any religious belief. Instead, I took several pictures of the crowd who were looking up and kept taking pictures of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Lots of other memories come across to me as I look through other pictures of my time in Mexico City, with my best friend then and now, Victoria. Different kinds of cheese on the table, mariachi band in a wedding, flowers that names i still don’t know. Everything just properly sits there, in the photo, as if things never change, as if time can be forever.
above photos by Smile
pg 38: Queering the archive
pg 37: First Fronteras
The essential message
Present
-why the present has no limit?
Photography is a method of recording what’s the present, what’s in the present moment. What are things that’s out of control, what's outgrown, outlawed, what’s the possibility. Depending on who’s behind the camera, what’s the collaboration between my mind, my eyes, and my hands. What’s there to see, what’s there to feel, what’s passing by.
At the moment, I am on a road trip driving down from Bennington, Vermont to Lafayette, Louisiana. A better way to put it would be there’s no exact starting point or ending point, it could be anywhere in between or anywhere further. It could be Baltimore to DC or Outer banks to Savannah, and it could go further to Utah.
Being a photographer, also the only one driving on this road trip, I wasn’t able to capture all the interesting moments while my hands half of the time were on the wheel. Regardless of much frustration, my emotions also result in gratefulness to what’s ephemeral. Going back to the essential message of First Frontier: The present is now, what YOU make it to be. Whatever comes with it is out of control by time, surroundings, fate, god, life, universe, because YOU are the ultimate factor.
Reflections
Reflections are one of the only way to take a group photo (safely, without worrying about other people stealing your photo haha)
Reflection could be another dimension, another reality, time travel experience (especially in fantasy)
Capture things you won’t think that’d be harmonized together.
Help you to see your surroundings better
Are good filters sometimes
Make you look funny (but also beautiful)
Never boring (at least to me)
It’s EVERYwhere-makes life fun
Are mirrors also reflections? Could be!
Can it be a photo with no people? Yes it can!
Can it be water? Definitely!
It’s ok if it’s the most random things ever
Will it be blurry? It might!
What about glasses? And car side mirrors? -when objects appear to be closer?
Can light have reflections? Absolutely? Can we have reflections without necessarily a medium? Camera could be the medium!
Can you be the medium of reflection? Apparently yes!
Wanna try a phone screen? Computer screen?
Time (lapse)
About time lapse, how to try it:
Switch the mindset: when you take a photo, try to take a video.
Just be there, don’t move, people might think you are terrible with technology, but you can’t move.
Feel the moment, let it be as long as you want, sometimes 2 seconds, sometimes 3 minutes. Breathe properly, think about how you breathe. And be fascinated about how much work your respiratory system does.
Purple Wall
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Charleston
