Behind the Scenes

The hardest part of this project was not the photography — it was the waiting. I would arrive at a location and stand for twenty or thirty minutes, sometimes longer, letting my eyes adjust and letting the space settle around me. The Hasselblad's mirror slap is loud in an empty corridor. I learned to breathe with it.

Access was a constant negotiation. In Seoul, security guards were generally indifferent — one even brought me tea. In Tokyo, I was asked to leave more than once. The Dongdaemun Design Plaza shots required three separate visits before I found a way in during the maintenance window between 4:00 and 5:30am.

I shot roughly 40 rolls of film over three weeks. Of those, perhaps 60 frames made the first edit. The final series is 8 images. The ratio tells you something about the nature of this work — most of the time is spent looking, not shooting.