- Reflection
During Bridge 2 I was paired with Christine, and both of us have been the caller and the responder. The subjects in our photos were mostly things common in everyday life. With this project as a motivation, we were trying looking at those normal things in unusual perspectives.
When being the responder, I was often worrying if my response was not clear enough, if the relation between my response and Christine’ call could not be seen by viewers and made them confused. Therefore, I replied pictures similar in shapes and compositions often, which made the relation really obvious.
But after the presentation it was pointed out that our calls and responses were too literal. The space for viewers to be surprised, think about or enjoy the common conceptual contents shared by various images was decreased due to our photos similar on a surface level. Also, after starting worrying about the relation between calls and responses, I felt stressful and restricted while finding and coming up with ideas and subjects. However, before this thought of “needing clear relations” occurred to me, spending efforts doing this project, both calling and responding, was really an exciting and enjoyable journey for me. It seemed that this intention to make relations between images obviously understandable not only diminished the space left for viewers to savor it, but also switched the fun of doing this project into tiredness.
If having a project that needs relations involved, like this time’s, in the future, focusing on visually or physically display the relations might not be an ideal solution. Instead, a more creative and playful way is to show surprises or varieties of stimulation, visually and conceptually, to viewers, and leave unsaid spaces for them to experience the content behind the work by themselves.
