A Fragile Exchange is the project I created for my Master’s thesis. I spent the year meeting with people, making simple portraits of them, and recording conversations in which I asked them questions about their own faces. I fell in love with the combination of recorded voice and still image. In the project’s gallery form, the portraits are paired with audio recordings of the subjects’ ruminations.
I think I have a contentment that um, I’m assured of what I know and what I believe and where I’m going and where I’ve been, but I also have a peace that I don’t have to be concerned with what tomorrow is. I think it comes out in my eyes. And I have eyes too that can be hard when I’m cross with untruth and error, I won’t let it slip by, and that side of me comes out in my eyes. I’m very fortunate sometimes that I don’t see my eyes when they’re like that. Laughs.
I really don’t like my mouth, I’ve never liked it. The only thing I like about it is it’s my dad’s. There’s just no upper lip. The only redeeming quality that, you know, the conclusion I always have when I think I don’t like my mouth, is that it’s my dad’s, and I really appreciate that. You know? And I remember when I was little, I was so proud of that. Because I just loved my dad so much. He was a great guy, and he died when I was 15. And, I don’t know, he was the best father. I don’t know if he was a really good husband, but he was such a good dad.
I didn’t have any picture taken in China. That means before 10 years old, nothing. Then in Hong Kong I took the first picture because my mother in China wanted it. So that was my first picture, and my mother kept it so sacredly, so preciously; we separated for almost 12 years.
“I suppose when I when I was young, I used to place a beauty spot here. I thought it was beautiful, but it wasn’t…“
The first thing I ever realized that might be wrong with me, was in my face. When I reached adolescence, I had a ravaging acne that lasted into my early twenties. I mean like, the Mars Rover coming back showing pictures of the surface of Mars bad. I mean like it was, it had a completely transforming effect on my life. I had to make really hard decisions about which aspects of my identity I was going to give attention to and make decisions about being important or not, and which ones I was going to let go. It forced me to decide, to make a really hard core decision: I’ve got to relate to people in a different way or I am not going to make it.
