While You Were Looking Away (2011)

A digital collage created from 8 Holga (E to C) prints
6.8” x 16” Light Box (5cm thickness)
From the “Hongkong City Space” series

Edition 1 was presented at the Asia Hotel Art Fair, Feb 25-27, 2011, Mandarin Oriental Hotel at Jiang Art Gallery.

While You Were Looking Away (2011) uses one Holga print (120) made in 2005 as its raw material. The E-to-C (正片負沖) method allows me to get 2 deviated color versions of the same view from my home at that time. Obsessed with cinema, a time-based media, I turn a single view of a single moment into an unfolding process of alterating vision.

As a child, I had wild imaginations about the unknown, invisible, parallel worlds behind walls, or what happened to my house when we were all asleep. As an educated adult much in respect of science, I remain obsessed with possible parallel worlds. I assume many things could happen inside dark, uninhabited apartments just that we don't see it. Or our vision has been betraying us all the way: as I look away, how do I know what's happening right behind me?

Photography is enhanced vision. The camera is supposed to see more and better than we do with our naked eyes. And yet the frame cheats; it delimits. The only way to flesh out my frustration and curiosity is to double and multiply the same image -- to give it a life that was not there.

Lightbox view: