This stage returns to photography to examine how images attempt—and inevitably fail—to hold a person. Centred on friendship and distance, the work reflects on gestures of care that circulate through traces rather than presence. What remains is not the person themselves, but the space their absence makes possible. 01022026
TANGERINE
YOU KEEP A PHOTO AND I WEAR YOUR CLOTHES
Tangerine is a photographic project that examines how representation attempts, and fails, to stand in for a person. The work emerges from a longer trajectory concerned with selfhood and the limits of what images can hold.
The project marks a return to photography after a sustained period of working with sculptural and material forms. This return is not nostalgic or reconciliatory. It comes after a growing disillusionment with photography’s claim to representation, particularly when confronted with intimacy, friendship, and the impossibility of fully sharing inner worlds. Tangerine approaches photography with full awareness of its insufficiency. The camera is no longer asked to reveal; it is allowed to fall short.
The work centres on a friendship marked by distance (geographical, temporal, and emotional) and by the persistent awareness that inner worlds cannot be merged or fully accessed. The photographed subject is not treated as a model to be captured, but as someone whose presence already exceeds the image. Photographing this person is not an attempt at documentation, but an acknowledgement of failure in advance.
The subtitle — you keep a photo and I wear your clothes — names two gestures of care. Keeping a photograph suggests containment and symbolic possession; wearing someone’s clothes implies bodily proximity through residue and trace. Neither gesture succeeds in holding the person. This is not a question of who loves more, but of what kinds of closeness are possible through representation. Is an image ever enough, once a body has existed?
The title Tangerine points to a third, absent term. Referencing an object that never appears, it gestures toward desire formed through absence rather than presence. Like the pantomimed tangerine in Lee Chang-dong’s Burning (2018), what matters is not imagining the object’s presence, but forgetting that it is not there. Absence becomes structurally productive: not a lack to be resolved, but a condition that generates projection and meaning.
Tangerine accepts that photography, like language, produces distance even as it seeks connection. The more precise the attempt to represent, the further it moves from the person it tries to hold. This is not an argument against images, but a diagnosis of them. The photographs are intentionally quiet, allowing space for stillness and prolonged looking, where the viewer’s own projections can begin.
What remains is not the person, but the space their absence makes possible.
YOU KEEP A PHOTO AND I WEAR YOUR CLOTHES
Tangerine is a photographic project that examines how representation attempts, and fails, to stand in for a person. The work emerges from a longer trajectory concerned with selfhood and the limits of what images can hold.
The project marks a return to photography after a sustained period of working with sculptural and material forms. This return is not nostalgic or reconciliatory. It comes after a growing disillusionment with photography’s claim to representation, particularly when confronted with intimacy, friendship, and the impossibility of fully sharing inner worlds. Tangerine approaches photography with full awareness of its insufficiency. The camera is no longer asked to reveal; it is allowed to fall short.
The work centres on a friendship marked by distance (geographical, temporal, and emotional) and by the persistent awareness that inner worlds cannot be merged or fully accessed. The photographed subject is not treated as a model to be captured, but as someone whose presence already exceeds the image. Photographing this person is not an attempt at documentation, but an acknowledgement of failure in advance.
The subtitle — you keep a photo and I wear your clothes — names two gestures of care. Keeping a photograph suggests containment and symbolic possession; wearing someone’s clothes implies bodily proximity through residue and trace. Neither gesture succeeds in holding the person. This is not a question of who loves more, but of what kinds of closeness are possible through representation. Is an image ever enough, once a body has existed?
The title Tangerine points to a third, absent term. Referencing an object that never appears, it gestures toward desire formed through absence rather than presence. Like the pantomimed tangerine in Lee Chang-dong’s Burning (2018), what matters is not imagining the object’s presence, but forgetting that it is not there. Absence becomes structurally productive: not a lack to be resolved, but a condition that generates projection and meaning.
Tangerine accepts that photography, like language, produces distance even as it seeks connection. The more precise the attempt to represent, the further it moves from the person it tries to hold. This is not an argument against images, but a diagnosis of them. The photographs are intentionally quiet, allowing space for stillness and prolonged looking, where the viewer’s own projections can begin.
What remains is not the person, but the space their absence makes possible.