During the COVID-19 pandemic, the enforced return to the domestic sphere for over two years necessitated a radical reassessment of my position within the societal fabric. This stillness prompted a fundamental inquiry: Who am I? Whom do I belong & where ?
My project 'The Pause', is a long-term photographic inquiry into qualia—the ineffable “what it feels like” of being. As Nagel (1974) argued, there is a specific subjective character to experience that cannot be reduced to physical components. My work seeks to visualize this internal state, capturing the sensory fragments that constitute reality. In these fragments, I identify what Barthes (1981) termed the punctum—those accidental details that pierce the viewer.
I am fascinated by the idea of the micro-universe within a single organism or object. When magnified, the minute becomes as vast as the cosmos, suggesting that the "in and out" states of an organism extrapolate toward a continuum of life and non-life. This reflects Pascal’s (1670/1995) philosophical meditation on the "two infinities," where the human being is suspended between the abyss of the infinite and the abyss of the atomic.
In a landscape now accelerated by the artificial intelligence revolution, the act of seeing has moved beyond documentation. As Baudrillard (1994) warned of a "hyper-reality" where signs of the real replace the real itself, The Pause acts as a counter-movement. It is an invitation to inhabit perception itself, utilizing the camera as an extension of the body. This follows Merleau-Ponty’s (1945/2012) philosophy that the body is our primary means of communication with the world.
The Pause approaches organisms not as isolated individuals but as beings defined by their inseparable relationships with their environments. This mirrors Barad’s (2007) concept of "agential realism," suggesting we are part of an ongoing entanglement. By shifting the degree of magnification, I aim to show that the internal world of a "thing" is as expansive as the universe, urging a renewed awareness of our entanglement with the living and non-living world.
References.
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Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press.
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Barthes, R. (1981). Camera lucida: Reflections on photography (R. Howard, Trans.). Hill and Wang.
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Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and simulation (S. F. Glaser, Trans.). University of Michigan Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012). Phenomenology of perception (D. A. Landes, Trans.). Routledge. (Original work published 1945).
Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat? The Philosophical Review, 83(4), 435–450.
Pascal, B. (1995). Pensées (A. J. Krailsheimer, Trans.). Penguin Books. (Original work published 1670).
( work in progress )
