Conversations explores the relationship between photography, text, and subjectivity. By inviting collaborators to start “conversations” with his photographs, Lee hopes to explore the malleability of the meanings that photographs can have, and what new meanings can emerge when we remove text or add unexpected kinds of words.
The project first began as a site-specific installation where personal photographs were placed around Objectifs’ space in an open-ended manner for visitors to encounter with in their own ways. These photos were taken over the past decade in his 20s — fragments of memories with friends, traces of feelings and small moments he wanted to hold on to.
In the next part of the project, he invited Samantha Yap to respond to the installation. She wrote a dual-perspective mini-story with sections of the story dispersed across the space.
In the final part of the project, Lee invited Dennese Victoria to respond to the same set of images to make a publication. The result was comfort book for nervous children. The photos were passed to Victoria without much context, who provided a textual response that weaves together fiction, poetry, and an open-ended narrative.
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The project was made as part of Site Unseen — programme started by Objectifs in 2021 that invites artists and image makers to create site-specific image-based works for spaces outside of a conventional gallery. Through this, it proposes new ways of encountering everyday spaces that have been overlooked.
2023 © Lee Chang Ming