Sora Woo “Life Companion”

K&P Gallery

[Image: Sora Woo "Life Companion" (2014) Archival Pigment Print, 19 x 13.47 in.]

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by Allen Frame

The intimate domestic space shown in Sora Woo’s photographs of her grandparents at home in South Korea is both a physical and psychological space.
Physically, the place is the grandparents’ apartment, which provides context for their relationship.
The space they occupy sitting or sleeping frames their activity, but more revealing is the particular space in between them.
They sit in close proximity but are often at different angles, as if in different worlds or states of mind, and in fact, they are indeed separated by the grandfather’s condition of dementia.

Woo’s grandmother is his caregiver, and her devotion and sense of duty are indicated by her constant, close presence.
In the photograph of them posed together, facing front, she is gazing directly at the photographer, while his eyes are turned away.
His focus is elsewhere. The important space of this work is the internalized space of this difference in mental acuity and all that it implies; the grandfather is in his own reality, while the grandmother is attuned to his condition, responsible for his welfare, and living with her own response, which includes a loyal sadness and her own fatigue.

The photographer, who was reared by these grandparents, has disappeared into the role of observer; no longer the child being taken care of, she is now the photographer with empathy for the situation, and perhaps, curiosity to see her grandfather in the role she once played herself, the innocent to be looked after.
The pictures are about three kinds of memory, the one the photographer, who has left to study in the U.S. and has now come back to make photographs, brings with her in reacting to a new set of circumstances; the memory that the grandmother has for the 60 years in which her life was joined with her husband’s; and the grandfather’s memory, now fixed in an experience of the present.

The gravity of these sensibilities overlapping in a confined space is evoked by quiet, subtle shifts in the positions and gestures of the two companions in their daily routines.
Their actions are now circumscribed by the grandfather’s condition, but their dignity and individuality are still apparent.

The profound meaning of this dedication between two people, and of the careful and precise scrutiny by the photographer, builds through the series, each image adding depth and insight into a moving, clear vision of the final stages of a lifetime.