New York, A Phantom City Photographs are a proof that "I was there at the moment." But in the photographs of this series, I wasn’t there at the moment. The development of media has made it possible to roam the streets of New York from Seoul. Using Google Earth Street View, I wandered freely around the city of New York and captured images I encountered. As if I were at the site, I carefully framed and adjusted the angles of the scenes, so that the captured image becomes a distinct view of my own. With such procedure, I could create a scene in New York from Seoul. What happened several months ago in New York came into my present time. In the captured images, Google has blurred the face of the people for privacy protection. Interestingly, it appears to me as a symbol of the anonymity of the city. Not only the figures, but also the buildings are subtly distorted to give an illusional atmosphere like in a dream. Then, is what I am seeing truly New York? Although the images is an authentic capture of the city by Google, it feels unreal, because everything is suspended. The city in pause draws attention to the minute details that were overlooked when everything was in motion. Looking at the figures with blurred faces that float around the city like ghosts, I begin to wonder who are the actual inhabitants of this city. Even the two-dimensional figures on billboards seem more real than the ghostlike ones. The series of features my solitary exploration through the giant city of suspended images, and presents New York with well-recognized but unfamiliar visions. This series reveals the hidden aspects of the city. The figures in the captured image seem to have emerged out of nowhere, and none of them seems to be connected with one another, which recalls the image of ourselves. They may bump shoulders as they walk past the streets, or perhaps stand in the same crowd, but each person is isolated and on one’s own. I suppose that those individuals and I, no matter where we are, share the same loneliness. Although the people in the photographs do exist in reality, they are mere figures in a simulated reality in my captured image. As the boundary between reality and virtual reality grows fainter, individuals in real life gradually become more isolated. This moment that I believe to be reality may be a dream to someone else. The digital world may be binary, but our lives are growing ever more obscure. Stickerture The stickers in the series of indicate the ‘ego’ of modern people. The figures are affixed to sticky papers, smiling and waiting to be sold. These mass-produced stickers are slightly worn out each time they are used, but they don’t always look unhappy. Even if they are duplicated images, each of them displays its own fanciness. The stickers not only implicate the despair of modern people living in systemized and modularized society, but also point out the uniqueness in each of us.