[re]connect 전은 미국 Purdue 대학교 예술대학에 재직 중인 Min kim park 교수가 퍼듀 대학의 기획공모 지원금을 받아 개최한 「Postmodern Documentary Photography」심포지움과 작품전 기획에 의해 이루어진 전시이다. 이 전시는 지난 9-10월 미국 Patti and Rusty Rueff gallery의 전시를 마치고 11월 한국의 syo gallery를 거쳐 싱가포르 Nanyang대학교의 ADM gallery에 순회 전시된다.

미국에서 전시된 [re]connect 전에는 미국에서 컨템퍼러리 사진가로 왕성한 활동을 하고 있는 Joe Johnson, Regina Mamou, Julia Cybularz, Billie Mandle, Nate Larson & Marni Shindelman, Min Kim Park, Lynn Lee와 싱가포르의 Oh Soon-Hwa, Jesvin Yeo, 한국의 Lee Dong Jun이 참여하였다. 한국 순회전에는 기존의 해외 작가들과 한국의 이주형, 김성훈, 쉰스터, 장용근 작가가 참여한다.

발명과 동시에 최고의 재현 수단으로 인식되어온 사진은 기술적 진보와 함께 디지털 사진의 등장으로 인한 이미지 조작 가능성으로 더 이상 그 지위를 담보할 수 없게 된다. 사진은 탄생과 함께 누렸던 사실성 혹은 명증성의 신화와 Eugène Atget로부터 시작된 다큐멘터리 사진의 객관성의 의미는 약화되고 사진가의 주관적 관점이 강조 되었다. 모던시대의 주관적 관점에 의한 작가주의적 다큐멘터리 경향조차도 디지털기술의 발전과 포스트모던을 거치면서 새로운 향방과 출구를 모색할 수밖에 없는 상황에 있다.

디지털 미디어의 발달로 대다수의 지구인은 카메라를 소유하게 되었으며, 통신술의 발달로 세계는 경계를 초월한 사진이미지로 넘쳐나고 있다. 현대사회는 대량생산된 이미지에 갇혀있다. 역사 속에 등장했던 선각자들과 미국의 뉴토포그래픽스와 독일의 뒤셀도르프학파 등의 사진가들이 시대적 상황에서 사진이 나아가야할 좌표를 제시했던 것처럼 오늘날의 컨템퍼러리 사진예술가들도 형식과 내용에 있어서 사진의 새로운 방향을 모색하고 있다.

그들은 사진의 존재론적 의미 변화에 주목하여 대상을 재현하기보다 해석한다. 주관적 해석을 위해 고정된 의미에서의 시간과 공간을 해체하여 재구성 하고 감각적 경험을 차용한다. 대상의 구체적 형태를 파괴하기도 한다. 그들은 역사, 정치, 사회, 문화, 종교, 인종, 자연, 성 등에 관해 주관을 근거로 고유한 창조적 개념을 탐색한다. 대상에 집중하기 보다는 대상을 향한 자신만의 독창적인 개념적 의식에 집중하여 그것을 이미지로 보여주고 있는 것이다. 이러한 태도는 Post Photography를 고민하는 작가들의 창작행위에서 드러난다.

아직 Post Photography를 하나의 이념이나 운동 혹은 흐름으로 규정지울 수는 없다. 그 양상은 매우 다양하며 개별적이며 순간적인 형태로 나타난다. 따라서 그 진화의 한계를 가늠하기도 어렵다. 분명한 점은 그들은 무한한 사진의 우주에서 지금까지 드러나지 않았던 새로운 가능성을 탐색하고 있다는 것이다. [re]connect 전은 사진이 직면한 시대적 상황을 극복하고 Post Photography를 모색하는 컨템퍼러리 사진가들의 고심을 보여주는 작품전이다.

2014. 10.
syo gallery 디렉터 이 동 준(Lee Dong Jun)

Nate Larson : http://www.natelarson.com/
사진과 디지털 비디오 등의 미디어를 사용하여 활발한 작품 활동을 하는 컨템퍼러리 예술가이다. 그의 작업은 미국과 해외에서 전시와 인쇄매체를 통해 소개되고 있으며, 특히 NPR, Hyperallergic, Gizmodo, New York Times, Hotshoe Magazine, Flavorwire, BBC News Viewfinder, Frieze Magazine, British Journal of Photography, Washington Post 등에 소개되었다. 그의 작품은 Orlando Museum of Art, Portland Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Woodstock 사진센터, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago 등에 소장되었다. 현재 Maryland Institute College of Art 의 교수로 재직 중이다.

Billie Mandle : http://billiemandle.com/
Massachusetts College of Art and Design에서 MFA 학위를 받았으며, 미국과 해외에서 많은 활동을 하고 있다. 2010 NYFA Fellow in photography, Brooklyn Arts Council Individual Grant를 수상하였으며, 제25회 Hyères Photography Festival에서 finalist로 선정되었다. 현재 Hampshire College 의 교수로 재직 중이다.

Joe Johnson : http://joejohnsonprojects.com/
San Francisco Art Institute를 졸업하고 Massachusetts College Art 에서 MFA학위를 받았다. 미국과 해외에서 활발한 활동 중인 컨템퍼퍼리 사진예술가이다. 2008년Ohio Arts Council의 작가 지원을 받았으며, DeCordova Museum, MassMoCA, Bonni Benrubi Gallery in NY, Flatfile Gallery in Chicago, and Gallery Kayafas in Boston등에서 전시회를 가졌다. 그의 작품은 보스톤의 Museum of Fine Arts, 캔사스시의 The Nelson-Atkins Museum , DeCordova Museum in Lincoln MA와 Beach Art Museum 등에 소장되어 있다. 현재 Missouri 대학교의 사진학과 교수로 재직 중이다.

Julia Cybularz : http://juliacybularz.com
Drexel University에서 사진을 전공하고 School of Visual Arts에서 MFA학위를 받았다. 미국과 해외에서 활발한 작품 활동을 하고 있다. 그녀는 Aaron Siskind Memorial Scholarship, SVA 동문상을 비롯한 많은 수상을 하였다. 대학원 졸업 후 Mary Ellen Mark 와 Tina Barney에게 사사를 받았으며 American Photo 23, PDN, Critical Mass 등에서 작품집이 출판되었다. 현재 필라델피아의 Drexel 대학교에서 사진학을 가르치고 있다.

Regina Mamou : http://reginamamou.com
Rhode Island School of Design을 졸업하고 Art Institute of Chicago에서 MFA 학위를 받았다. 시카고와 LA를 중심으로 활동하고 있으며, 미국과 해외에서 많은 작품 발표를 하고 있다. Fulbright 장학금을 받았으며, 시카고의 Historic Water Tower Gallery 에서의 개인전은 Artforum의 비평가들로 부터 2103-14 전시 중 최고작품으로 선정되었다.

Min Kim Park : http://www.minkimpark.com/
New Mexico University에서 사진학으로 MFA학위를 받았다. 사진과 비디오영상 그리고 설치 작업을 위주로 미국과 해외에서 활발한 작품 활동을 하고 있다. New Mexico Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art 등에서 전시를 가졌으며 2014 대구사진비엔날레 작가로 참여하였다. 그녀의 비디오작업 Zummarella는 뉴욕의 White Box와 CologneOFF 등에서 상영되었다. Art Institute of Chicago의 강사를 거쳐 현재 Purdue 대학교의 교수로 재직 중이다.

Oh Soon-Hwa : http://www.soonhwaphoto.com/
School of Visual Arts에서 MFA 졸업 후 Columbia대학에서 EdD 학위를 받았다. 네델란드의 Noorderlicht Photo Festival, 이태리의Lucca Photo Festival, 중국 국제사진페스티벌을 비롯한 국제적으로 다양한 전시에 참여하고 있다. 싱가포르 국립미술관, 핑야오 사진페스티벌 등의 전시 행사에서 기획자로 참여하였다. Ohio Arts Council Fellowship, Aaron Siskind Memorial Scholarship 등을 받았으며 현재 싱가포르 Nanyang 대학교의 교수로 재직 중이다.

Lynn Lee
미국 Purdue대학교에서 석사과정을 졸업하고 활발한 작품 활동을 하고 있으며, Purdue대학교에서 사진을 가르치고 있다. 저서 "Dreaming in Analog“는 Stephan Sprague상을 받았다. 예술사진과 상업사진을 넘나드는 작품 활동을 하고 있으며 작품제작 방법에서 전통적임 표현법을 벗어난 비전통적인 방법으로 작품을 만드는 것에 관심이 많다.

이 주 형 Lee Joo Hyung
한양대학교 인문대학 졸업 후 홍익대학교 대학원에서 사진디자인을 뉴욕대학교 대학원에서 사진미디어를 전공했다. 예술사진과 매체이론을 강의하면서 사진작업과 글쓰기를 병행해왔으며, 이를 바탕으로 숭실대학교에서 ‘포스트-포토그래피; 실재와 재현의 관계’ 연구로 미디어학 박사학위를 취득했다. 저서로 ‘디지털사진의 이해’와 역서로 ‘예술사진의 현재’가 있고 ‘격자풍경’(갤러리 인덱스, 2014) 외 8회의 개인전과 ‘네오산수’(대구미술관, 2014) 등 다수의 기획전에 참가했으며 예술의전당, 영월사진박물관, 선재미술관 등에 작품이 소장돼 있다. 현재 계명대학교 사진미디어과 교수로 재직 중이다.

김성훈 Kim Sung Hoon
경일대학교 사진영상학과에서 석사 학위를 취득 후 숭실대학교 미디어학과 박사과정에서 미디어아트를 전공하였다. 2008년도 문화예술진흥 공모사업으로 젊은 예술가 창작활동 지원을 받았으며, 2010년도에는 올해의 청년작가로 선정되었다. <채워진 공간 Ⅱ - 박물관>시리즈에서 그는 현재와 과거, 기억과 망각, 흔적과 상상의 경계에 위치한 기억-오브제와 박제된 공간을 추적하는 사진적 행위(acte photographique)로 시간성의 뒤틀림과 지속 공간의 단절을 표현하고 있다. 최근 그는 2012대구사진비엔날레 특별전 등 다수의 전시를 기획하였으며 다양한 시도의 사진 작업을 하고 있다.

쉰스터 Schinster
독학으로 사진을 공부하여 총 3개의 시리즈를 영구적으로 진행하고 있으며 그 중 세 번째 시리즈인 '스트리트 드라마'로 영국에서 열린 포맷국제사진대회 실험사진부문 우승, 제33회 중앙미술대전 대상 수상을 하였다. 언제나 우연히 발견한 형식으로부터 시작하여 내용을 채워나가는 방식을 준수함으로써 직관적인 예술작업방식에 중점을 두고 있다. 또한 작품을 불특정다수에게 어떻게 전달하는가에 대해서 작업의 최종 완성도를 기울여 전시장에서 관객들이 작품과 상호작용할 수 있는 감상의 장을 만들고 있다.

장용근 Jang Yonggeun
장용근은 영남대학교에서 사진석사를 취득하고 현재 경북대학교 디지털미디어아트학과에서 수학하고 있다. 2008년 올해의 청년작가(대구문화예술회관), 2010년 신진작가전시지원 프로그램선정(서울시립미술관), 2013년 상하이현대미술관 레지던스, 2014년 하정웅청년작가에(광주시립미술관) 선정되었다. 〈수많은 ‘나’들-겹쳐진 증명〉시리즈는 증명사진을 중첩시킴으로서 획일화된 집단의 정체성을 보여주는 작업이다. 정치, 권력, 사회제도 안에서 개인의 정체성은 지워지고 스트레오타입화된 우리의 초상을 보여준다. 공장FacStory, 도시채집 등의 작업을 진행하고 있다. 개인전 도시채집(진선갤러리)과 도시탐색(서울시립미술관), 시대의 초상, 초상의 시대(서울시립미술관), 격물치지(일민미술관) 등의 기획전에 참여하였다.

▪ Nate Larson - http://www.natelarson.com/
is a contemporary artist working with photographic media, artist books and digital video. My projects have been widely shown across the US and internationally as well as featured in numerous publications and media outlets, including Wired Magazine, The Picture Show from NPR, Hyperallergic, Gizmodo, Vice Magazine, the New York Times, Utne Reader, Hotshoe Magazine, Flavorwire, the BBC News Viewfinder, Frieze Magazine, the British Journal of Photography, Marketplace Tech Report, The Washington Post, and Art Papers. My artwork is included in the collections of the Orlando Museum of Art, Portland Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Cleveland Institute of Arts, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago. I hold a full-time academic appointment in the photography department at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and will chair the 2014 national conference of the Society for Photographic Education.

GEOLOCATION
My recent project, GEOLOCATION, in collaboration with Marni Shindelman, tracks GPS coordinates associated with Twitter tweets and pairs the text with a photograph of the originating site to mark the virtual information in the real world. New site-specific work from the series was recently completed for Third Space Gallery in New Brunswick, the Walter N. Marks Center for the Arts in California, and the Format International Photography Festival in the UK. We recently created site-specific public artworks for the Atlanta Celebrates Photography Public Art Commission, the Indianapolis International Airport, and the DUMBO Business Improvement District. GEOLOCATION is featured in the final issue of Aspect: The Chronicle of New Media Art. We were artists-in-residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in June 2013.

We use publicly available embedded GPS information in Twitter updates to track the locations of user posts and make photographs to mark the location in the real world. Each of these photographs is taken on the site of the update and paired with the originating text. Our act of making a photograph anchors and memorializes the ephemeral online data in the real world and also probes the expectations of privacy surrounding social networks.

Twitter estimates there are over 450 million tweets daily, creating a new level of digital noise. Clive Thompson uses the term ambient awareness to describe this incessant online contact in his New York Times article, "Brave New World of Digital Intimacy." According to Thompson, "It is. . . very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye." Our collaborative work is a means for situating this virtual communication in the physical realm. We imagine ourselves as virtual flâneurs, ethnographers of the Internet, exploring cities 140 characters at a time through the lives of others.

▪ Billie Mandle - http://billiemandle.com/
photographs the intersection of people, their environments and beliefs – focusing on the spaces where communities and ideas coalesce. She received her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2008 and majored in biology and English at Williams College. She is a 2010 NYFA Fellow in photography, a Brooklyn Arts Council Individual Grant Recipient and was a finalist at the 25th Hyères Photography Festival. She is an assistant professor at Hampshire College.

RECONCILIATION
My work explores photography as both an attentive study of reality and a way of pointing beyond it. Beginning with the premise that the world withholds as much as it reveals, I look at the intersection of people, their environments and beliefs, focusing on the places where lives and ideologies coalesce.

In Reconciliation I photograph confessionals, the small rooms in Catholic churches where people confess their sins. Almost all religions have theologies of repentance; the confessional is unusual because it acts as a physical manifestation of an abstract idea. It gives form to the interiority of penance. The walls and kneelers of the confessional embody the prayers of the penitents, and the penitents in turn leave their mark on the confessional. I am interested in how the photographs, as physical objects, might speak to what is intangible and ineffable about these spaces.

I was raised Catholic and so the traditions of these rooms are familiar to me. Photographing the confessional has become a type of ritual: I use a large format camera and available light, lifting the curtain of the confessional and looking into the darkness, just as I lift the dark cloth of the camera. The confessionals contain contradiction: darkness and light, corporeality and transcendence. They are rooms where people confess their sins and ask for grace surrounded by the traces of past confessions. In making these images I approach the confessionals as metaphorical spaces – rooms that suggest the paradoxes of faith and forgiveness.

▪ Joe Johnson - http://www.joejohnsonphoto.com/
earned an MFA from the Massachusetts College Art and a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. His work has been reviewed and/or published in Art in America, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Esquire Magazine Russia, and YVI Magazine in the Netherlands. Johnson was a runner up for the 2008 Aperture Portfolio Prize and was nominated for SF Camerawork's 2010 Baum Award and the 2011 Santa Fe Prize.
In 2008 he received an individual artist grant from the Ohio Arts Council. He has participated in exhibitions at the Cleveland Art Museum, The DeCordova Museum, MassMoCA, Bonni Benrubi Gallery in NY, Flatfile Gallery in Chicago, and Gallery Kayafas in Boston. Johnson's photographs are included within the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln MA, and the Beach Art Museum.
He has lectured at Carnegie Mellon University, Indiana University, MassArt, Rhode Island College, the DeCordova Museum, and the Beach Museum of Art. He is currently head of the art photography program at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

▪ Regina Mamou - http://reginamamou.com/home.html
is a Chicago- and Los Angeles-based visual artist who engages in a researcher's process that is tied to the aesthetics of place and the search for unconventional aspects of locations. She is the recipient of a Fulbright fellowship to Amman, Jordan, and has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. Her first solo exhibition, presented at the Historic Water Tower Gallery in Chicago, Illinois (2013–14), was selected as an Artforum.com's Critic's Pick. Mamou holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.

ALL THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED IS PRESENT
In All That Has Ever Happened Is Present (2014), Regina Mamou dovetails her studies in the occult with critical examinations of representational photography. Here the face-mounted photograph is rendered as a sleek acrylic surface presenting an abstract and enigmatic form with a luminous quality. The image is created through a flower pressing, specifically using a sunflower, a heraldic device of Spiritualism. This particular plant, which contains a Fibonacci sequence at its center, hints at a well-ordered concept of the universe, bringing macrocosmic musings to microcosmic experiences, thereby suggesting that the literal subject matter is just beyond the perception of vision.

▪ Min Kim Park - http://www.minkimpark.com/
explores issues surrounding gender, ethnicity and identity using performance, video, photography, sound and video installation. Park's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally since 2007. She has numerous solo and group shows at venues including New Mexico Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, Site Santa Fe, Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona State University, University of Houston, University of California, Santa Barbara, Emory University, and Syo Gallery in South Korea. In 2012, Park's video work, Zummarella was screened at White Box, New York, Columbus International Film and Video festival, CologneOFF and Videoholica. Park has been an artist in residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art and the recipient of a Rosenquist artist in residency at North Dakota State University. She received a MFA degree in Photography from the University of New Mexico in 2007. She has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Northwestern University in Chicago. Currently she is an assistant professor and the area representative of phorography in the department of Art and Design at Purdue University.

ZUMMARELLA
Zummarella is a caricature about women who have it all. The work deals with the status of empowered women in a rapidly globalized world. It depicts the mores of the contemporary women who battle to be super women. The challenges facing these women are heroic in proportion, whether it is self imposed or imposed from the outside even though the women are highly empowered. This work examines the tragicomic impossible situations, and isolation stemming from the conceitedness of feeling "different and better than anybody else." It also deals with the hypocrisy of seeking to be different and the agony of contemporary women unable to escape from a self made predicament and social mores in the land of entitlement. In the throes of the reflections & doubts about ongoing women's struggle to reclaim their identity, I dream a super-heroine. I intend to create the 3rd image from the correlation of two models in this work. I desire these images will be Übermensch for women.

▪ Julia Cybularz - http://juliacybularz.com/
holds a B.S. degree in Photography from Drexel University and earned her MFA from The School of Visual Arts. Julia's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She has received numerous awards for her photography and video work including an Aaron Siskind Memorial Scholarship as well as The School of Visual Arts' alumni scholarship. In addition to her graduate studies, Julia has studied under notable photographers Mary Ellen Mark and Tina Barney. Her work has recently been selected for publication in American Photo 23, PDN and Critical Mass. Julia Cybularz lives and works in Philadelphia where she teaches at Drexel University.

BREAKING THE GIRL
Hannah, of Breaking the Girl, is a 12-year-old who has a severe curvature of her spine. She has been repeatedly, painfully fitted with, and worn numerous braces since she was nine. Our gaze is directed at a young girl about to embark on the physical changes that coincide with puberty while simultaneously facing the confines of a corseted brace worn twenty-three hours a day. The nature of the brace restricts her body’s natural urge to expand. The photographs visually investigate the emotional and physical connections people have to their bodies and minds at times of failure. The images explore the physical manifestations of anxiety, hope and the pervasive sentiment that the subject is inhabiting a space not quite their own. I seek to examine the alienation and disconnect that occurs when the subject is affected by physical and psychological constrictions. The photographs consider the nuances of everyday encounters, which often get overlooked. I too, have severe scoliosis but unlike Hannah, I refused to wear the brace as a child or get the surgery. The surgery includes spinal fusion and the insertion of two steel rods along the spinal column. The new photographs combine a mixture of our shared experiences.

▪ Lynn Lee
holds a MA in photography from Purdue University. A non-traditional path towards developing personal work took her through several years of commercial photography. Recently, Lynn has started developing new, conceptual bodies of work which reflects both the love of analog process and the freedom of digital manipulation and printing. She has a published paper titled "Dreaming in Analog: The marriage of vintage photographic process and the contemporary world" and was a recipient of the Stephan Sprague Award in photography while an undergraduate. Lynn Lee teaches photography and photographic history at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN.

THE MANNYS
Documentary imagery tells tales of social phenomena. The Mannys represent a history of feminine form that serves as an undercurrent to expectations of perfection since the first "real woman" mannequin was toted around by Lester Gaba in 1932. Gaba's plaster mannequin, Cynthia, was his social companion; the perfect woman. Over the years, mannequins have continued to represent desirable proportions in the female form, changing stylistically as fashion and social expectations dictate.
These images, printed on fabric-like paper, are both fluid and fixed. Analog capture of the images addresses a process grounded in photographic history; a fixed image embedded in film. Digital scanning and printing allow for the fluid manipulation of tone.
On the surface of the paper, metallic printed patterns push the images behind a veil, forcing the viewer to seek out the image behind the patterns. This voyeuristic activity reflects a long history of gaze and judgment.

▪ Oh Soon-Hwa - http://www.soonhwaphoto.com/
is a photographer, curator, and lecturer in the photography and digital imaging program at the School of Art, Design & Media. She holds an MFA from School of Visual Arts and a doctorate degree (EdD) from Columbia University in New York.
She has participated near 60 exhibitions internationally, to name a few, the Noorderlicht Photo Festival in the Netherlands, the Lucca Photo Festival in Italy, the Pingyao International Photo Festival in China, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham, the Houston FotoFest, the Pochon biennale, the Ssamzi Art Space in Korea, the Asian American Art Center, the Society for Contemporary Photography, the Korean Cultural Centre in Los Angeles, the Palm Spring Desert Museum, and the Sotheby's Young International Art Program. Her curatorial works include exhibitions at the National Museum of Singapore and the Pingyao International Phtography Festival.
She is a recipient of Ohio Arts Council Fellowship, Korea Arts Council Fellowship, Aaron Siskind Memorial Scholarship and UNESCO-Aschberg Bursaries. She is a member of several academic associations and an editorial board member & reviewer for the Photographies Journal, Routledge, UK. Her teaching courses include Contemporary Issues in Photography, Documentary Projects, Narrative Portraits, Traditional wet darkroom as well as Digital darkroom.

QUIET DREAM
I am originally from South Korea. I have been living out of the country for 20 years now. At my last family visit, I noticed a growing population of Vietnamese women migrating to Southern rural area of South Korea. While driving around the countryside, I noticed a small banner written "Vietnam bride" with mobile phone number in the middle of nowhere. I got curious to find out how would Vietnamese bride adjust her life, e.g. Korean language barrier, family culture, and social stigma, in homogeneous society of Korea. For a long time, I myself had to understand and deal with them when marrying a foreigner, my husband. I immediately got interested in these Vietnamese women, in their environment, experiences, dreams, hopes and motivations.

I called and contacted Korean families through city hall and community center, but social stigma prohibited these newly wed women to speak to outsiders. It was quite impossible to gain access to the Vietnamese women in Korea. I have made some contacts with several Vietnamese journalists and then travelled down to Mekong. I found this small island, Tan Loc, which locals indicated that many girls from that island had married to foreigners. Hence, it has been nicknamed as "Taiwanese Island".

For about 3 years I have visited and photographed in that island every 6 months. At each of my visits, I stayed in a local house that allowed me to get to know their daily life. As I felt comfortable with the community of people on the island, they gradually opened up their minds. They allowed me to photograph in their houses and helped me to create some of panoramic shots by posing in front of my camera. Some of the images are staged but they are not completely fictional. In documentation of the people and place in this island, I intended to capture these young women's environment (people and places) and state of mind.
While working on this island, my initial misconception of the international marriage changed: young women and family were quite well informed by difficulties of the international marriage, however, they chose to leave their home country for better life opportunities and for supporting their family left behind in Vietnam.

This series of photographs was developed in the Mekong Delta area and constitutes a collaborative effort between the photographer and these young women. Instead of focusing on the hardships that push these young women to seek expatriation, the project aims at emphasizing the beauty of what they intend to leave behind, which includes their environment, the landscapes, their family, their friends, in other words, people and places with which with they have grown up and which form part of their identity. What is left behind is the known and where they head constitutes the unknown, places where everything will be different, from the climate and landscapes to the language, culture, and people.

▪ Jesvin Yeo
who trained at Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design in London, is a Singapore-based multidisciplinary designer and an assistant professor at the School of Art, Design & Media of Nanyang Technological University. Her research interests are focused on historical and contemporary cultural changes, particularly related to Asian cultures, Asian studies and material culture. As the foundation of her research, Jesvin employ design, photograph and technology as a means for understanding, examining and critiquing the world around her. Jesvin's works has been published at renowned international conferences, journals and design magazines including International Design Alliance (IDA) Congress, AIGA design educators conference, International Journal of Design Creativity & Innovation (Taylor & Francis) and Applied Typography 22. Her works has also been exhibited at 798 Art District in Beijing, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Washington D.C., and has won international awards such as Red Dot Award (Communication Design), A' Design Award, How International Design Awards, iF Communication Design Award, to name but a few.

DISCONNECT
Juxtapose with the ideal of Coco Chanel – A girl should be two things: who and what she wants. The series of photography explore the discrepancies between the ideal or traditional role of women and the reality of the modern world. Focusing on their facial expression, these images capture and document the vulnerable moments of these women – a young lady forcing a smile that hide her dream of a higher education. The distant look in the eye of a middle age lady expose her desire of staying home to fulfill her duty of motherhood. The helpless eyes of an elderly lady reveal her intention to enjoy her golden age. These images portray the different generations of women buffeted and shaped by larger social, economic and national concerns.