8.18.2012 Feature: for Chris Marker, born and died on the 29th by Champneys Taylor

NITE SHIFT

Thomas Michael Corcoran is a photojournalist currently residing in Seoul, Korea. I first viewed Thomas’s photos on Facebook. Facebook an informal, pedestrian way of viewing photographs. There are, in total, many billions of Facebook photo posts (only a guess). Portraits, landscapes, still lifes, appropriated imagery, and so on: Instagram, of course, and countless profile picture updates, travel photos, restaurant dishes, party shots.

I work the swing shift so I get home from work around 11:30 EST. It was Corcoran’s photographs of food, ranging from traditional Korean dishes to cheeseburgers, which originally piqued my interest. Briefly, the reason for this interest was probably physiological – I was hungry.

Late-night snacks for some may be dinner or breakfast for others. I am, like most social network users I presume, constantly teased by the fact that there is something “out there,” something continuous and mostly independent of my being, something I can tap into by simply logging on and contributing.

Soundsystem, 2012, photograph, dimensions variable

Photography, like social media, is always imbued with Time. Time suspended, frozen; time eternal; time immaterial; timeless; time-sensitive; time out. For the time being I realize that an essayistic investigation of how time functions, how it is experienced, and how it is represented in art and other media is, well, timely. I am not looking to wax a great deal on this because I am back in DC now and I am past deadline.

When I first asked Thomas if he’d be interested in collaborating on what I am going to call a creative interview, by providing photographs and a few words, I had not formed a curatorial angle on his work. Indeed, to say that I curated this selection would be a stretch. It would be more accurate to say that Thomas curated the selection himself. I can only surmise that his curatorship began in the field and not in the darkroom or at the computer. In any case Thomas promptly sent me some recent photographs and I include most of them here. We were unable to engage in much back-and-forth and it’s probably better that way. So, without further ado, let me get to the actual essay-writing aspect of this project, in which I write about the specific photographs included herein.

MORNING COFFEE

I am sitting at my brother’s current pad in New York City. Ahh the luxuries of cable TV, spare keys and clean towels. Or, just cable TV. Seoul, Korea is fully 13 hours ahead and is not at a loss for technology of the sort that I have here. I am interested in Seoul, Korea because I am putting together an essay about a selection of photographs by Thomas Michael Corcoran, who currently resides in Seoul. Corcoran took these photos in Seoul, Hong Kong, and Kyoto (Japan). There are five of them, any one of them could take the center place in a row.

Kyoto Gate, 2012, photograph, dimensions variable

“Soundsystem” recalls mobile DJ units invented in urban Jamaica. Corcoran explains: ‘I ride my bike along the JunglangChun, a tributary of the Han River, almost every weekday, a distance of about about 25 kilometers. Seoul has a ton of retired people and many of them have nothing to do so they all buy bikes and ride around meeting each other at different break areas along the rivers. Some old guys like to decorate their bikes, this is THE most decked-out bike I have ever seen.’ This photograph is an outlook, an homage to self-direction and jerry-rigging. Compositionally, it functions much the same as “Kyoto Gate,” and the two photos are conceptually related as well. “Kyoto Gate” finds its figurative interpretation in “Joanna (midair),” which mimics the push-bars of the bus exit in MACRO.

Hong Kong Street Car, 2012, photograph, dimensions variable

“Hong Kong Street Car” is transitive. That strained, worried, or tired – indifferent? – look on the woman’s face won’t stay for ever. The car is moving: photography as literal representation of the temporal. Ostensibly a frozen moment, this street car shot implicates the future. There is a prominent arrow, pointing left-to-right. The angled push bars mimic the ceiling crease in “Joanna (midair).” Joanna defies gravity but the image is grounded. There is a suspended exhilaration, a bounce.

Joanna (midair), 2012, photograph, dimensions variable

“Joanna with Double Landscape” can be viewed as a palimpsest marked by accrual rather than erasures or simple over-writes. It was taken along a city drainage stream in Bonghwa-gu. If the camera’s framing creates a stage (composition) then this photograph represents a short-stack of additional information. It carries its own history. Think of it in terms of layers, of successive additions to a fixed view. Joanna marks the third of four interventions on this scene. First there was the nearly frame-spanning stonewall. Second, there was the implication that this wall (evidence of the city’s infrastructure) could be beautified by the addition of this picture of a mountain stream. Joanna’s intervention (placement, stance) happened third. Fourth, photo was taken. Finally a fifth step: the viewing of this photograph in this context.

I’ve only now reached what could be called the kernels of a curatorial project. Alas, my time is up. Don’t think twice….

Joanna with Double Landscape, 2012, photograph, dimensions variable

Thomas Michael Corcoran is a journalist, photographer, graphic designer, artist, and instructor. Corcoran is also a freelance writer and photojournalist. During his four years in the Marines he was responsible for finding, writing, and photographing stories of interest and supervising subordinates’ assignments. Corcoran received a BFA in photojournalism in 2006 at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, Washington DC and studied under Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Stephen Crowley (photographer, New York Times), and Tyler Marshall (writer, Los Angeles Times), as well as photo critic and author Andy Grundberg (New York Times), Corcoran would like to get a grant to “live like an artist. Being an artist seems so expensive recently, and working takes away from the time you have to think about and create art. So I’d like to get a grant to live like an artist.”

Corcoran is organizing the 100,000 Poets for Change event in Seoul, that will take place in late November in cities all over the world. This will be the 2nd annual event. bigbridge.org/100thousandpoetsforchange

Corcoran has an ongoing project shooting and editing photos of his life and things he finds interesting. blog.thomasmichaelcorcoran.com