∴Serial Music: Vol. 03 is Out!∴

Over the course of 2024 I put together 12 photo booklets featuring pairs of images made here in Korea. I’m releasing one a month from the start of 2025. This project is called Serial Music.

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I grew up in a part of the world that has only one mode - late summer. The enduring heat and its amber cadence had this strange effect on time, neutralizing it into one long moment. It’s true that this impression might just be the seasonless quality of memory, but Durban was seasonless too. As I photographed and prepared for the release of Serial Music: Vol. 3, it came into some precise clarity though, that where I am right now, time is striding on.

It’s a bit of a shock to me that I’m already a quarter way through releasing this project. I think part of this surprise is due to the seeming compression of this month thanks in part to a Thailand work trip and a number of shoots waiting for me on my return. There’s a balancing act in how you manage your time and the demands made by every personal project, but the extended nature of Serial Music has set the wire a little higher than I’m used to.

I was speaking with a friend recently about our various views on how to stay productive. For better or worse, the only way that really works for me is to announce ahead of time exactly what I intend to do, and when I’ll do it by. The sense that there’s some expectation for me to deliver on my word keeps me working a little more diligently than I would if I was the only witness to my aspirations.

This approach has been really helpful for my dedication to producing these zines. It’s also helped me finally focus the attention I always threatened I would on making videos. In case you missed it, I’m releasing one YouTube video a month to coincide with the Serial Music releases. The most recent one was all about the characteristics of inspiration, and how they relate to photo projects. The next will be about how to photograph with print in mind.

I’ve also been releasing a pair of turntable slipmats with every zine because, hey, why not?

Out at dinner last night, I was asked by the wife of another friend about the meaning behind the project and the images. My friend was kind enough to have bought the entire 12-zine-set, and so he received a tidy discount and guaranteed his ownership of the entire Serial Music project, which is limited edition I don’t need to tell you. He and his wife have been looking at the zines together each month.

Here’s what I told her: Serial Music is not a narrative project, it’s meaning isn’t found in a linear way like that. Rather, it’s like an array of impressions that for one reason or another caught my attention, and when gathered together, meaning is made through the relationships these impressions inspire.

“When I look at the photos, some of them are confusing. I’m not sure what connection you are making with them.”

To this I replied, that, while I want readers to be able to get a sense of my perspective, that’s only part of it. What I really want is for them to be encouraged in making their own meaning from the image pairs. When this happens, I believe they won’t be just getting my understanding of what I see here in Korea, they’ll be able to experience what I’ve experienced living in a place I’m a stranger to, and the acts of meaning-making that happen in that circumstance.

I want readers to think what they think and feel what I feel.

Here’s one of my favorite pairs in Vol. 03.

So much of my experience in Korea has been tied to the two poles of welcome and resistance. The resistance I talk about is just how long it took me to feel secure living and working here. My frustration’s zenith occurred one night on Yanghwa-Daegyo bridge as I sped away from a tense meeting with my recalcitrant workplace, having just paid a bitter ransom for documents imperative to my visa, screaming from my motorbike into the dark that I was going to live in this goddam country and terrifying the poor woman crossing to the far side of the Han. I was seeing a lot of symbols of resistance after that, locks being one.

But as I settled into a stable way here, and my looking softened, I began to find gentler, kinder symbols. The second image is of two slabs placed at the entrance to a residential low-rise. Korea’s population is aging, and the slabs are a small step put in place to help frail tenants into the building. They’re an easy thing to overlook, I almost did, but when I twigged with what they were, my heart softened like an unclenched fist. I photographed them through the gate, open, but with no doubt as to which side I was on.

Serial Music: Vol. 03 is out now. I hope you get to see it, think what you think and feel what I feel.

Cheers,

Chris ✌️