#26 - New Old Neighbourhoods

I spend a lot of time walking around residential areas. They don’t offer many of the sights that you typically see of Korea, especially if you only see it online. Instead, I usually find people interested in chatting, the occasional offer of coffee or a biscuit, and artifacts of the lives that have been lived here for decades.

One of my favorite questions is ‘How long have you been here?’ I ask and answer it regularly. The people most interested in talking are almost always older, and their response is usually to claim more years than I have to my name. I have a vague recollection of where I was when I was a kid and first realized that if I have a mind, that everyone else does too. It was at the park down the road from my house in Durban. When I speak to people in these places I’m reminded that they have histories like I have history. Most of theirs precede mine, and for a moment or two I get to see time stretch out to either side of me, and feel a part of it.

I grew up in a place where there was an undercurrent of mistrust that shrouded anyone passing through my neighbourhood. I would look out of my window, over my fence, minding who was walking by. It’s not lost on me that I’ve become the thing I used to look out for. Living in a country this safe has made it possible for me to wander in these places. I know the chances of me encountering anything that might threaten my safety are so low that I have no cause to think of them. In the same way, despite my outsiderness, there’s little reason for anyone to doubt me.

This sense of ease has worked its way into my photographs. I feel more secure in Korea than I ever have in the past, and the decreased tension in the images reflects that. It’s probably also part of why I’ve been photographing the places to which Koreans belong. When just trying to live here felt dramatic, my images tended toward the sensational. They were either busy, or lonely, reflecting Korea in a way that I wanted to show it. For the most part, now, I’m just trying to see it as it is.

I know, though, it will always be many different things, to me, to the people that are born here, to the people that try to make it home. It’s tempting to both idealize the place where you live (you do after all have to live there) as well as to disparage it. Neither stance will make living here easier, because willful blindness to any contradiction you encounter will just leave you feeling dishonest about your experience.

Making honest pictures doesn’t always mean making pictures that are true. For now, these images reflect the mostly good relationship I have with where I live. There’s often something dark at the edges of all the light, but surely that’s something to which everyone can relate.