[Joseonhee's Frame] The 'Shwin' Has Come Along with the COVID Era

May 2020, Cheongsando. My time is 3 PM. Before sunset, I resolve to devote the remaining few hours entirely to my work. (Provided by Joajoa Studio)

Around my thirties, my life was truly brilliant. Endless shoots happening two or three times a day, encounters with beautiful, stylish, and dazzling actors and models...

I simply threw everything into living my thirties. Ten years flew by in a flash, and although my forties were a little less brilliant than my thirties, they gained more depth and passed by just as brilliantly. The past twenty years passed in the blink of an eye like a lie, and the age of fifty, which I thought would never come, arrived for me too.

I thought I couldn’t go alone

Fifty, seen at a lonely thirty,

Was so distant that I thought

I couldn’t reach it without someone

Holding my hand.

Even when I staggered to forty,

Fifty was still far away.

Like this verse from poet Kim Su-yeol’s poem "Fifty," it was an age too far for me. Fifty came without time to prepare.

Since I have never worked at a company, I have no idea what it feels like to have a stable job. Looking back, the past 20 years of living like a madwoman, pouring everything out, was probably due to the survival logic and fear of this field where I could be pushed out at any time.

Whenever calls looking for me became a little sparse, I felt unbearably anxious. Even though there would never be a day when everyone would suddenly forget a person named Jo Sun-hee at once, I was always anxious and uneasy.

So, without knowing if I was hurting someone or burdening others, I immersed myself in shoots. Having cried and laughed with photos through the lonely thirties and the staggering forties, fifty came to me unprepared. Ironically, it came with COVID-19!

Suddenly, as if everyone had forgotten Jo Sun-hee, my phone was silent. If it weren’t for COVID-19, I probably would have been very anxious and depressed.

For the past 20 years, struggling with anxiety and fear to avoid being pushed out, it is almost impossible for me to endure a few months of calm and not busy. Since everyone and the world stopped simultaneously, regardless of age or will, I naturally accepted my situation in the field where I also stopped.

So I stopped and looked inside myself. Since the time that had run without brakes suddenly stopped, I naturally began to look at my future time.

Escaping from the time unknowingly consumed and spent in the commercial field, I face my true self.

And sometimes I zone out, neglect myself, and just sit quietly, and then I began to see. I saw myself holding tightly to the edge, unwilling to fall out of that exhausting field, and I realized I cannot waste my upcoming fifties.

Now I start anew. When I first met photography, what I wanted was pure photography. I wanted to express what I thought through photos. Back then, I was young but had no money and had to make a living, and until now, I have made a living enough.

I want to take photos truly for myself, not for anyone or anything else. So, during the few months that stopped, I occasionally took out the works I had done, looked at them, refined, experimented, overturned, studied, and placed them in front of the camera dozens of times. The knot that wouldn’t untie began to loosen, and I started to see the direction of my work. My heartbeat quickens again.

My time is three in the afternoon. Before sunset, I vow to pour the remaining hours entirely into my work.

We all need our own time to stop. To break free from the time unknowingly consumed, to just zone out or be neglected... and then see or feel something.

Nature, we, you, and I all need time to rest, so... these days, I am grateful for time.

Jo Sun-hee, Photographer / Associate Professor, Department of Photography and Imaging, Kyungil University