Hearts in a Cage
Jeju, with its blend of natural beauty and shamanic mythology, is the perfect base for Simon J. Powell to show his home as an “ancient, towering volcano, rising out the middle of the ocean.” But, as he further explains, the semi-tropical island’s powder white beaches are, but “a five-minute stroll away on a lazy lunch-break, but a world away from students’ daily lives.”
Even within the relaxed environs of Jeju, Powell stated that students spend weekends and vacations packed cheek-by-jowl in public libraries, cramming for wave after wave of examinations. This high-pressure path to young adulthood was the grounds for Powell’s SCHOOL photo series.
His images, taken at the school he teaches, show students sleeping on desks, carrying out punishments in the hallway, looking caged behind windows and doors and stuck studying in empty classrooms. “I would say the series reflects to an equal, if not greater, degree the emotions of my personal life, as much as my opinion of the school system.”
Powell’s black-and-white style adds weight to the serious subject matter, explaining that it has a “tendency to distance the subject matter from reality.” He continues, “We are accustomed to seeing life in color, so a rendition of the world in monochrome forces us to pause and look more closely. Black and white portraiture lets the audience see a face and read the eyes without distraction. In essence, color photographs of people accentuate the external; black and white shows us something of the soul.”
Growing up in England, Powell had a starkly different experience to what he portrays in his SCHOOL imagery. “Mine was a positive experience, characterized by a nurturing, open-minded atmosphere of choice, opportunity, and self-motivated learning and specialization.” This is not to say that he can’t relate to the struggles of those around him, as he explains, “There is something profoundly universal about the nature of youth and the trials of adolescence. By and large, we are all born with far more similarities than differences. Children are children everywhere. However, the ways we are educated to act and think, how we are taught what the world is and what it means to be human and alive: these things vary dramatically. They shape not only how we perceive the world, but the essential nature of the world itself.”
The desolate world he shows in this series is not entirely true to life, but honestly and deliberately one-sided. “My time teaching here has been fantastically rewarding and positive, filled with laughter and inspiration.” Inspiration, it seems, is something this particular photographer is never short of.
To see the latest in the SCHOOL series, and other works, go to the Facebook page, “Simon J Powell Photography.”