The Person I Used to Be Is No Longer

This work stems from my experience with failed facial recognition at a security checkpoint. This incident made me skeptical about the reliability of the technology and, at the same time, triggered thoughts about the complexity of personal identity. In order to study this issue in depth, I collected a variety of documents from different periods of time, including student ID cards, graduation certificates, temporary residence permits, driver's licenses, etc. These documents not only involve the question of "who," but they also serve as crucial references to my personal journey, recording key information such as my place of birth, length of residency, job title, skills, and the social roles I have played at different times.

In comparing these ID photos, I noticed that my appearance changed significantly, not only in relation to time but also influenced by the lenses and angles each photographer used. This resulted in the fact that even photographs taken in the same year could present very different appearances. This prompted me to think about the challenges of relying on past looks to confirm present identities. Identities are not static, and over time certain identities may no longer exist. In a sense, the me in the past photographs has died.

The connection between death and photography reminded me of paintings used to depict death before the advent of photography and the art of post-mortem photography. Therefore, I digitally modified the photos, closing the eyes in each one to express the imagery of death. This choice echoes Roland Barthes' insight on the connection between photography and death, that the living, while being photographed and becoming a photograph, has become an irretrievably deceased person in the photograph. Paradoxically, there is a discrepancy between the presence of the subjects in the photographs and their state of being in the present moment, which makes it seem that the documented photographs of the past sometimes fail to fully validate the identity of the here and now.

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