"A phone call won't save you" Limited Edition 1 of 8 - Limited Edition of 8 Print

I think of the uneasiness of buttonless elevators whenever I write in English. It is quite safe to say that actually, there is nothing to worry about getting into a buttonless elevator. You will get to the right floor anyway. Yet people like me still feel anxious about it. You cannot be entirely sure where it will bring you until the doors open, and no matter which floor you will get to, whether it be right or wrong, you cannot do anything about it. The result is not wholly up to your will or action. I am now writing in English, a language that is not my mother tongue. My English outgrows me: while it is I who is writing it, I am not the one who can be fully sure if it "sounds right" or not. This aperture I grasped from translating a short story of mine, which was composed in Korean, into English. The translated version appeared on The Margins, on September 11th, 2019. When I read my work in English, I sensed that the meanings which I tried to convey were not being conveyed in total accordance with my will: it would not be a mere simile to say that the work in English seemed to have gained its own will―I entered the elevator, yet there was no button that I could press. It moved on by itself. This is where my cameras come into the scene. I use film cameras: Argus Super Seventy Five 65mm and Lomography Fisheye One 35mm for now. No, as you may already know, in no way are they even close to high-end cameras. They are cheap, relatively crude, and on top of that, rather uncontrollable. With Fisheye One, for instance, you can shoot only with single, already-set shutter speed. Neither does Argus Super Seventy Five have many fancy functions. And the best part: even what is shown in their viewfinders do not actually match with what their lenses are shooting. Thus arises an even bigger uncertainty, compared to other film cameras. I hardly edit my photographic works besides resizing them. I as an artist, consider my photography to be a striving against my anxiety: the fear which arises from the subjective lacking of control over the world. My cameras will capture moments, and in those moments there always shall be a vacuum which I am not let into; I shall carry on, however, shooting, believing that I will get to the right floor after all, though the elevator may be buttonless.