Searching for Poon 尋找潘 traces my grandmother's steps from mainland China into Hong Kong, searching and imagining her past in present-day Hong Kong.
2020 - Ongoing
Dear Poon,
I write letters to you so that one day, in this world or the next, you will know that someone from the future remembered you in your past.
Maybe some day, you will remember me too.
-Justin
Poon, my grandmother, cannot remember her past.
The past is fading and memories are constantly being forgotten or re-constructed. I can only infer based on early memories of her and the collective stories which my relatives and parents have told me. Old family photos and documents left behind become objective clues of her life. I use them to search and trace her past through photography of the present, creating an imagined narrative formed around the fragments of her life. The objective reality of her life and my remembrance converge into a single narrative, reducing the separation between myself and her that intertwine with personal memories, notions of place, and a collective history of Hong Kong.
These sets of images and words - when collected and pieced together - are doorways to remembering and imagining the forgotten past where the boundaries between memory, fiction, and reality are blurred. They bridge between the present we exist in and the old world, but also question the nature of memory, imagination, and reality.
Fujifilm GFX Challenge Grant Program, 2021
Regional Grant Award