Human Relations
The zine “Human Relations” incorporates my relationship with people as a clue to my past, present and future, with a transition of my diminishing participation in social activities. The narrative is divided into three sections marked by the appearance of text and the layout of photographs. The first section, inspired by Gregory Halpern’s photography, demonstrates my impression to the past – the “good old days” of hanging out with friends and traveling to different places. The sea is the essential imagery in the first part as it may represent naivety, dream and hope, corresponded with a written narrative of going to “Xi’an”, which is a city in China with mysterious historical background and has almost become a cliche place as travel destination. The second section, illustrating the present, has a drastic shift in tonality introduced by a poem about a person being stalked when returning home. I attempt to convey anxiety and confusion as a clue to my reclusiveness, as the images also become more distant and dead-pan, inspired by the book Borderless by Yishu Wang. In part three, representing the future, I transformed the Time Map project from Time class and created two spreads fully covered with circular spiky patterns (generated through a piece of audio of a train passing by my apartment) inspired by the presentation of time in the film Interstellar. This is almost a “homage” to my past-oriented personality while feeling fear and paralyzed when picturing the future. The zine, in the end, is indeed a timeline of myself during the recent years with a dreamlike and ambiguous impression like a stream of consciousness. I have also made specific choices on the materials of the zine. The images were printed on a soft and tender paper that has a warm cast that has a very similar quality to nostalgic memories. The cover was made by a semi-transparent paper, allowing the experience of flip-open the zine resembles disclosing a veil, again suggesting the experiencing of remembrance.
8.5 x 5.5 in, 36 pages
inkjet prints
2021
