Whirlpool, Photography, 2025
Whirlpool is an ongoing project that explores the fluid interaction between personal subjectivity and the surrounding world. It reveals the world through a deeply personal lens. Everyone perceives the world uniquely—consciously and unconsciously. Some experience it as an interconnected whole, while others gather fragments to piece it together.
I trace the route of my attention: how certain traits irresistibly draw me in like whirlpools, dimming the rest of the world, and how I discover the world by following the chain of these scattered whirlpools. It is a brief report of long-lasting self-observation—a reflection on what happens in my mind daily and how things flourish as they merge with my subjectivity. Attention, as I see it, is a dynamic process—a dance of seeing, feeling, and connecting. My attention flows through fleeting moments: a twinkle on glass, the striking blue against dazzling whiteness, or the coldness evoked by exposed ankles in winter.
This work is rooted in photographs I took during my first visit to southern France. It delves into what happens between the fleeting moment of perceiving a new view and the act of pressing the shutter. The latter, to me, is an act of affirmation—an action that occurs only when a certain route of attention has formed. I marked these attentions—the whirlpools that captured me—on the photographs. The next step is to unfold these frozen moments and reveal the dazzling sparks within my whirlpools.