Photo Essay: Uncoupled Culture

There is a term, coined gleefully by some, and looked upon with disdain by others, called “couples culture.” While certainly trans-cultural in biological or psychological necessities, this term carries with it visual representations unique to this culture, as we readers find ourselves living within.

From pre-fabricated wedding halls physically dominating their geographic peers to coffee shops celebrating the feelings of twosome-ness that they hope to instill in their patrons, images in text, graphics and even sounds (think of your average K-pop ballad) easily materialize within your average street walker. What feelings of need, longing, desire or dread are fed or internalized as we navigate this inter-sensory stream of experience that constitutes a life lived with relative ease in Gwangju?

When thinking over these questions by simply documenting couples with their actions or habits, their faces presented to the world and their inner truths seemed simply inadequate. The quality of being together within a term coined couples culture necessitates its opposite — namely that alone-ness is possible and is therefore a reaction against this assumption. When taking pictures, it soon became clear that couples culture is indeed also a singles culture — the act of being with another seemed to spur attention to those in waiting.

At times, the camera showed this waiting as a reaction to the desire to lock in mind and step with another being, with cultural mores or with an identity lying in wait, forged over millennia — the more photos taken, the more similar seemed the emotions between those in either state. The pictures suggested that to be coupled is to equally be alone, for one not only implies its counter but also necessitates the inevitable return of that which is considered lacking in the present.

These photos were taken with older medium format film cameras and as such necessitate a slower, monotonous, yet intentional working process, often punctuated with brief moments of relative truth. As such, finding the rhythm of light and tone takes time and means a working process spent largely without others.

When taking these photos, I could not help but feel simultaneously alone, yet integrated within the experiences of those passing by in the lens, and those beyond. As such, the moods reflected from these images reveal not only a small slice of the pictured’s emotional spectrum experienced when engaging such a term but also my own subjectively real experience. I felt this with painful glee.