Soomin Ham - Lingering Glimpses
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Statement
“Lingering Glimpses” is an ongoing project commemorating American soldiers who passed away in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This project was conceived in 2017 following Ham’s show, “Sound of Butterfly”, reflecting her personal loss. At that time, she happened across a news summary of the death toll of the soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. These many young lives lost affected her deeply and amplified her own sense of loss. Ham started then, to create a new body of works as reflection and remembrance, using random images of soldiers, unknown and anonymous, as an embodiment of this profound sadness.
Low-resolution images of the soldiers collected from the Web were processed and cropped to show only faces, and then each refined portrait was transferred to a transparent negative film. Traditional darkroom methods were used to create black and white silver gelatin prints. Reflecting the loss of lives cut short, the film was processed using an expired developer and no fixer. This method results in photos with unpredictable lives of their own as the images slowly fade and pass away.
Print Information
Medium: B&W silver gelatin print and pencil
Size: 11” x 14”
Year: 2017 - 2021