Installation

In 2019, a green corduroy shirt entered my life. It graced my camera lens with its presence. I had the idea to capture the modern youth I was exposed to, particularly a group that happened to be at a very special crossing in their lives. A place and time where one feels like a teenager, but is in fact a young adult, and is on the cusp of reaching “full” (or proper?) adulthood. Each person feels like such an individual, but also like they do not quite fit in anywhere or everywhere. I went up to various friends and foe and asked them to wear the green corduroy shirt, while I took photographs of them in their natural environments. About 7-10 images were chosen to form an atmosphere around that specific person and location. I added an additional element to the theme by taking and then placing the photographs in chronological order, from morning to night, every hour being a different person. It started with my close friend, Juice, waking up in the morning, and ending with another friend, Yuki, at the end of the night at a costume party. The photographs were printed onto transparency sheets, that were then cut up into the shape of film strips. The installation piece consisted of a 4 metre long “film strip”, that was lit up from behind with an equally long LED light strip. The reason I chose the green corduroy shirt to be worn by every single person who was photographed was the idea that although every single person is their own individual, at the very core of all of us, we are in fact all the same with the same basic instincts of wanting to love and be loved, to be healthy and to live happy. 

In Autumn of 2020, I turned those photographs into a still-image little video. It utilizes an excerpt from Matt Haig’s book ‘The Midnight Library’.