the conflict of the ordinary

For this project, I sought to create images that exude an aura of anxiety and conflict found in the transitions of everyday objects and places. My inspiration for the subject matter and initial approach were the films of Yasujirō Ozu. I used my apartment, commute, and the Skiles Classroom on Tech's campus as the subject matter for the series. My camera angles and shot framing also draw from Ozu's cinematography.

However, while I wanted to utilize familiar objects and places, I also wanted to inject a sense of the uncanny into the series. To inspire conflict in my images, I turned to Akira Kurosawa. While the final images lack the human groups that populate Kurosawa's shots, I tried to evoke similar conflicts through the placement of inanimate objects. Kurosawa’s ability to create conflict reaches beyond the off-cited "triangles of power" of his actors, utilizing the juxtaposition of two textures or objects of different scales to create visual dissonance.

With these two visual languages in mind, I moved forward to create my images, capturing transitions, conflicts, and liminal spaces of objects and places. The series highlights the aggressive meeting of two disparate sections of concrete on a walkway, the same tiles rendered in different scales within the same frame, a clock robbed of its purpose by freezing it in time, to name a few. The colors are dark and vibrant. Most shots feel as if they have an oppressive force weighing down the image. By combining elements of both Ozu's and Kurosawa's filmmaking, I created images that lay bare my anxieties about change and transition.

Originally created for LMC 3256 - Major Filmmakers at Georgia Tech. This iteration of the course focused on predominantly East Asian and South East Asian filmmakers and was taught by Qi Wang, Ph.D.