Wonderland
by asi
I have a weak spot for children’s drawings. I used children’s drawings in my research few years back and found them fascinating both psychologically and sociologically. They are both a window to children’s inner world but also great for examining children’s (inter)subjectively held ideas about the larger social world in which they participate. Burns (1987) claims that images appearing in children’s drawings “are but ferries carrying us to the shore of experience beyond verbal thought; a shore where one picture is worth a thousand words”.
When I saw Yeondoo Jung wonderland series (Via Yuval’s blog) it almost brought me to tears. The experience of children’s drawing for me was almost exactly the opposite. The children in my research drew mostly horrendous real life experiences (reality depicted in drawings). In this wonderful series Yeondoo Jung has transformed the imaginative mind of children into a beautiful photography series (fantasy drawings become reality). They are absolutely amazing. I can sit and look at them all day long.
Whats more, this work has been an amazing collaborative project:
Jung’s new series of photos, “Wonderland” (2004), presents costumed adolescents posing in sets based as closely as possible on children’s drawings. He collaborates with many people to bring to life the boundless imagination in the drawings. For four months, Jung oversaw art classes in four kindergartens in Seoul and collected 1,200 drawings by children between the ages of five and seven. After pouring through them, he carefully selected 17 drawings and interpreted their meanings. Then he recruited 60 high school students by passing out handbills at their schools in which he invited them to act out the scenarios in the children’s drawings. In order to recreate faithfully drawing details such as dresses with uneven sleeves or buttons of different sizes, he convinced five fashion designers to custom make the clothing for the photo shoot. He also made props unlike any scale found in reality but similar to those in the drawings.
“Wonderland” changes fantasy into photographic reality without the aid of computer-generated graphics. The works, entirely made by hand, are a tremendous group effort similar to a stage production that captures the sudden changes in the actors’ forms, in the midst of people going about their lives against the backdrop of the city.
Simply beautiful. I wanna hug you Yeondoo
