Thing Tectonics

PHOTOGRAPHY
Written by JC Verona

With her series Thing Tectonics, photographer Su Ji Lee makes us more aware of the ‘things’ we often forget or take for granted in our daily lives. Her work reimagines everyday minute items and activates their space in a visually compelling and engaging way. 

Text and Photography Su Ji Lee

Throughout our lives, we breathe in and out but barely consider the breath we possess. Trees grow from their hidden roots yet we witness life and death only in their branches. The earth rotates and the continents drift even when one is standing still. For big happenings and small mysteries to coexist in this visible world, we often diminish the ontological value of various existence by referring to them as ‘things’. Here, Thing Tectonics explores how photographs can reimagine and activate the occupied space of minute beings that we neglect to acknowledge.

The series of photographs feature various dispositions of recognizable objects such as tree branches, balloons, eggs, and common crockeries. They interact with the carefully staged environment where the embedded order and functionality of beings are questioned and recorded. For instance, For Being a Tree, 2021, is a visual attempt to recreate a tree that is solely consisted of discarded tree branches on the street. While the branches are held together with glue and strings and form an image of the tree, it is a dysfunctional imitation that is futile as an individual lifeform. Further turning familiar anomalies into flat miniature, the featured works emulate a blueprint of the manipulated reality. With humor and weightlessness, the designated portion of the world is dissected into my units of measure.

“We often diminish the ontological value of various existence by referring to them as ‘things.”

“With humor and weightlessness, the designated portion of the world is dissected into my units of measure.“

About Su Ji Lee

Su Ji Lee (b.1998) is a Brooklyn-based artist passionate about photography, installation, and puzzles. Starting her photographic journey in Seoul, South Korea, the works focus on evoking intimacy in unfamiliar surroundings and sharing visual experiences regardless of residential disparity. With an equal gaze to human figures and still life, Su Ji reassembles anonymous yet effable cues into a flat miniature.

To see more of her work, visit her website or follow her on Instagram

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