Heeseung Chung

The Reading 2009

'Untitled' from the series The Reading 2009

Photographic portraiture, on a fundamental level, implies the issue on how to portray the inner self of an individual through the camera. As this invisible and constantly changing self, cannot be bound to the temporality of photographic representation, the human face in the photograph is always regarded as both familiar and strange. This series of images, entitled Persona, was inspired by my interest in this intrinsic issue within the genre of photographic portraiture.

Within this body of work, I have produced a series of portraits of actors playing their characters. My interest was fo-cused on the relationship with the staged and authentic emotion, as displayed by actors. By photographing actors' facial expressions at the moment of absorption into a character's emotional state, I have examined the psychological process with which actors' persona becomes their own temporary reality. During the performance, actors often reveal their in-nermost feelings and emotions, which they project onto the character to reach a level of psychological realism. At this moment, they paradoxically expose their disguise, their naked or vulnerable self simultaneously and the boundary be-tween the actor's mask and their face; and the acted emotion and the actor's own feelings becomes obscured.

This project thus encapsulates this in-between and vulnerable moment in which the actor's genuine sadness and staged grief are intermingled with each other. Through the investigation encompassing the relationship between the mask and the face within photographic portraiture, which is often ironic and hard to elucidate, I want to raise the fundamental issue of the nature of photographic portraiture: how can photography represent ones' feelings or the inner truth of the subject and how it is realized within the interplay between the camera, the sitter and the viewer? In this way, I want this project to invite the viewers to re-examine the way we perceive and understand the subject through the photographic image.

Heeseung Chung 2008

'Untitled' from the series The Reading 2009

'Untitled' from the series The Reading 2009

Ghost 2009-

Stereoscopic Viewer for Ghost 2009
Wood, Convex lenses, Arichval pigment print
80x150x80cm


'Untitled' from the series Ghost 2009

'Untitled' from the series Ghost 2009

'Untitled' from the series Ghost 2009