Black Noodle Soup
Black Day (April 14, a.k.a. Unit Solo/Solo Regiment, lee is informally when single South Koreans get together and eat Jajangmyeon – white Korean noodles with black bean sauce).
Black Day doesn’t apply to me, as I am not Korean, but I wanted to explore this idea of singledom, of being alone and an alien in this country.
This project evolved intuitively while I was visiting Seoul for the first time. I felt like a stranger in this city, and the divergence between the rapidly developing culture and me is, I hope, reflected in this body of work.
I wanted to engage with the culture and yet I was an outsider; these photographs were born as a result of this dichotomy. The people and places I photographed had a superficial familiarity and yet were unknowable to me.
I wanted to use photography to get to know them, and in the process I discovered a subtle connection between this place and myself.
