Black Midday

2011.3.11 Earthquake in Japan.Taewon Jang travels on a short journey into the villages of the tsunami and earthquake victims to discover the remnants of a disaster. The introduction includes a series of e-mail exchanges between friends in Japan throughout the process of the project. The artist personally takes us to investigate the site of the ruins that now exist as empty names on a map. Accompanied with a text, this publication examines the psychological situations drawn from reality and fiction, memory and oblivion, absence and presence.

It is a collection of works that weaves the series "Clichéd Landscapes", "Dopan", and "The Victims" from the short journey of Jang Tae-won, who visited the villages devastated by the tsunami and earthquake. The introduction of the book included an email that he had exchanged during the course of his work with his wife, whom he sent to his Japanese friends. The village view, which is only named after the map, depicts the psychological situation of reality and fiction, memory and forgetting, existence and absence, along with the texts written by the author himself.

Jang Tae-won (b.1976) was born in Seoul, South Korea, and has completed his master's degree in art from Columbia University and currently lives and works in New York. This book was created in honor of the 2nd Ilwoo Photo Award.