Poignant Pics no. 17 // Diana Nicholette Jeon
Welcome to no. 17 in our series Poignant Pics where we've asked photo curators, educators, collectors, and makers to share a brief essay on a photo that has significantly changed the way they think or look at the world.
In this issue, Diana Nicholette Jeon, who recently joined One Twelve as an editor, talks about Barbara Strigel’s image, Construct, and how she felt when seeing it.
I’m not sure where I am…
Barbara Strigel, Construct
liminal lim·i·nal | \ ˈli-mə-nᵊl \ adjective
1: of, relating to, or situated at a sensory threshold : barely perceptible or capable of eliciting a response liminal visual stimuli
2: characterized by being on a boundary or threshold, especially by being transitional or intermediate between two states or situations. liminality noun: a transitional or indeterminate state between stages of a person's life; an indeterminate state between different spheres of existence.
For the past 20 months, my personal life has been continually challenging. It feels like I don’t know where I am, and though I know where I have been, I don’t know where I am going. I'm not sure what is happening; I’m in limbo. I live somewhere beautiful - Hawaii - but it doesn’t feel the same anymore. This liminal threshold between my two worlds - the past and the future - is unfamiliar territory. The spaces are strange. Unfamiliar. Vacant. Compressed. I’m existing but not living. Therefore, it wasn’t surprising that I recognized something of myself as soon as I saw Barbara Strigel’s image, Construct, in the 2019 Critical Mass Top 50.
Although resembling traditional collage, her image manipulations do not take place on the photo or the paper, but as layers inside Photoshop. This process imbues the work with a different and much more painterly sensibility than more traditional images of a person in the street or building.
In this image, the person exists, but where? A window suggests that we are inside a building yet there is no sense of dimension or perspective. Neither is it a true abstraction of the space the artist used her camera to document. Just like me in my own life, the person in this image is enclosed in a pretty space with no landmarks or guideposts to situate her experience. My experience with this image was rooted in the way that it mirrored the liminal state of my life.
- Diana Nicholette Jeon
Barbara Strigel is a Vancouver, BC-based photographer who alters street images using torn and painted papers. She writes, “My interventions of space allow me to present a way of looking at the city that balances intimacy and distance and suggests that we are both together and apart in our urban lives.”
Diana Nicholette Jeon is a Honolulu, HI based artist and an editor at One Twelve publications. She was awarded her MFA in Imaging and Digital Art from the University of Maryland at Baltimore County in 2006. Jeon's work has been extensively exhibited; venues include the Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, the Griffin Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Hawaii State Art Museum and the Museo de Lamego. Awards include four Hawaii SFCA Purchase Awards, the International Photo Awards, the 11th Julia Margaret Cameron award, the Pollux Award and the Mobile Photo Awards. Jeon’s art has been featured in a wide array of publications, including Artdocs, Gente di Fotografia, SHOTS Magazine, the Art Photo Index, and Lens Culture.