Vernaculars with My Grandmother

My grandmother ran a local photo shop for many years. When black-and-white photography was mainstream, developing and printing were done one by one, by hand, in the store’s darkroom. The photo shop was a place that recorded people’s daily lives and special events; my grandmother would carefully develop the film in the darkroom, enlarge the prints, and hand them over to her customers.

Eventually, times changed. As color film became common, it became gradually difficult for the small photo shop to keep up. Most prints were sent to external photo labs, and the "work of the photo shop" that my grandmother cherished quietly drew to a close.

Even after closing the store, my grandmother continued to paint, camera always in hand. The camera was likely a small window for her to stay connected to the world.

In her later years, my grandmother suffered from dementia, and the distance between us slowly widened. Words, expressions, and memories—their outlines grew faint, and eventually, she became bedridden.

Faced with her condition, I naturally reached for my camera. To face my grandmother’s "now," to simply gaze at and record the subtle fluctuations and changes. It was a modest physical response, a wordless communication.

For the shoot, I intentionally chose the same medium format film camera my grandmother used when she was active. Instead of looking through the waist-level finder, I looked into her eyes and pressed the shutter without using the viewfinder. This often resulted in "blurry" images. Her eyes seemed to look at me, yet due to dementia, they often didn't recognize me, and I was bewildered by this invisible distance. That experience, along with the physical tension and the trembling of my heart during shooting, is etched into each photograph.

At the time, I felt I hadn't taken the pictures well. However, several years after her death, I began to realize that this very "blur" symbolizes the uncertain truth of our relationship. The photographs don't just project fragments of memory; they highlight the gaps and simultaneously reflect the incompleteness of memory and the potential harshness of photography itself. Within these conflicting natures, our story is deeply etched.

I aimed my camera not only at my grandmother’s face but also at her hands, feet, beloved opera glasses, radio, and the corners of her quiet room—the "things" that shaped her daily life. They are like small witnesses wandering between memory and reality. The physical confusion and conflicts during the shooting process are intertwined with my inner tremor and are born as part of the photographs.

Around the same time, my mother organized my grandmother’s vast collection of photos. Each of us, in our own way, was picking up fragments of my grandmother's existence and memory.

The resulting photographs and the organized albums are never a "complete memory." Rather, I feel that the power of a "fluctuating testimony" brought by photography resides within those very blurs and absences.

My grandmother has passed away, and as the seasons turn, I revisit these photographs, journeying between the past and the present, confronting them quietly. Photographs are not merely still images; they harbor the fluctuations of time and project the fissures of memory.

This project is a personal history revolving around the life of a woman who loved photography, and at the same time, an attempt to connect with the discontinuity of memory faced by a family dealing with dementia. The limits and richness of photography, aging and forgetting, and the uncertainty contained within—the "blur" is the core of our story, and I hope it resonates with the viewer's sensibility.