Seoul Welcomes You
$175
Leporello, continuous inkjet print
6"x8" (opens to 6"x50')
Edition of 20
Published 2015

Seoul first welcomed me in 2006, though, in fact, it never noticed my arrival. Seoul is the kind of city that seems to shed its skin, shifting form slowly and suddenly simultaneously. What comes finally into familiar focus is swiftly gone: replaced, rebuilt, renewed. And yet, after long looking, the underlying fabric of the city can be found, unbroken.

One can hardly conceive of a city like Seoul in its entirety or even exclaim, “This is Seoul.” Seoul may have been this a year ago, a week ago, a second ago. Maybe around the corner it is still this. More likely it is already different, was different before you ever saw it. I photograph and remix the fragmentary facts to limn the city’s outline. What is the extent of its possibility?

Seoul Welcomes You is meant to open a viewer to a series of virtual walks through the city. The format is on first glance first linear: a reader can page through the sequence of images as he would a bound book. Yet the leporello form offers the viewer the opportunity to engage with a broader selection of images in order to make connections outside the artist's sequencing. There are any number of unique experiences that a viewer can have in his reading of the book.