Photographer Yisak Choi

BABEL

 

This work is a story about our lives and the world.

 

An experiment was conducted at UCLA on the difference between humans and animals.

Animals felt happiness when they were simply given food they liked.

Humans, however, felt happiness when they perceived they were doing something just, and when they thought justice was being realized.

In other words, the difference between humans and animals is that humans respond to justice.

 

But something called pride (or selfishness) living within us

wants to become the sole master of the world, and attempts to build a tower where he exists and extends his grasp.

Thus, the value our society today universally pursues

is something that increases as we enjoy material things, pleasure and power.

 

But as it was with Pompey, and as it was with Angkor Wat,

though history may seem to be prosperous and thriving,

it has been proven that it will deteriorate and fall some day.

Perhaps injustices prevail in society, humans are in pain and unhappy

because the direction in which we are all heading is wrong.

 

In order to express our lives and the pain of the world,

I depicted the city in low-key tones.

That is, in the urban scenes that feel surreal due to the dark picture,

and the negative images of heaviness and frustration,

I tried to maintain a coolness, observing reality from one step behind.

Moreover, while using daily scenes of the city that surrounds us,

I made an effort to project a certain modernity, and at the same time,

to maintain traditions of photography,

by revealing intimate spiritual worlds in the trivial lives of people today.

 

Once I thought I was the center of the world.

I believed that if I acted as I wished,

the world would move in the direction I desired.

But when I realized my limitedness before the absolute being,

I could not but become modest.

 

These works are traces left in order that we may contemplate and reflect

on our lives and the values the world pursues, together.

 

"The roots and trunk of a large tree more than a hundred years old

are breaking apart the cracks of a gigantic building made of stone.

A city of death conquered by animals of the jungle appears before my eyes.

So where did all the people who had lived here go?"

(Words of a Portuguese explorer who discovered Angkor Wat in ruins in the 16th century.)