Q&A With Soomin Ham

(c) Soomin Ham

Multiple Exposure Gallery (MEG) is featuring the work of its newest members -- Soomin Ham, Tim Hyde and Fred Zafran -- through March 24th. The show's images reflect the three photographers’ very different ways of seeing and interpreting the world around us.

In the show, Soomin offers a selection of intensely personal, yet still universal, images from three series: Unseen, Dreamscape, and Sound of Butterfly. She shares some thoughts on her work below:

Your work in this show has a very personal origin. Would you tell us about it?  I lost my mother three years ago and it was sudden and unpredicted. In my grief, I began collecting the scattered memories that I shared with her. It was painful to see them in the family footage, but I began to feel gratitude for her love, her passions, her dreams, and the many things that she shared with me. I wanted to bring them to life through my photographic series, Unseen, Dreamscape and Sound of Butterfly.

Please tell us more about the series and your creative process.  Over the years, I developed an idea of combining images using old photographs and movies made by my father in the 1970s. Unseen is created from old negatives from my childhood that were never printed.  It is a photographic collage made of 20 digital enlargements of over- or under-exposed first-frame negatives, cropped and printed.  Based on the relative time frame and visual appeal, the selected images are torn by hand, and randomly arranged to form a quilt-like pattern.
Dreamscape is a series of photographic landscapes created from family portraits that are combined with still images from a family movie.  The projected movie was photographed and layered with ephemeral images to transform the work into an abstract image.
Sound of Butterfly is a portrait of still lifes composed with soft, blurry, and close up images.  I see it as a poetic metaphor of my mother’s journey through life.  Butterflies were favorites of hers, and for me, they are a symbol of rebirth.

(c) Soomin Ham

 What influences inspire your work?  My background in classical music and my Eastern culture have inspired my work. The common elements and correlation between music and visual arts fascinate me and they have helped expand my artistic vision. Both reward simplicity and balance and their influence helps add meaning to my compositions.

(c) Soomin Ham

Your work in this show is intensely personal, yet universal at the same time. How do you account for this? I believe the work itself should be able to tell the story behind the image.  I hope the viewers can find and relate to similar moments in their own lives and experiences when they observe these works.