Children of Paradise

I started taking photos of marine garbage simply because they looked pretty. But at some point, they started looking like abandoned children in the sea to me, being drifted away along the waves for a long time, completely worn out but still keeping their own appearance. Bringing those children back home from sea shores in Jeju Island, South Korea, has become my daily routine for years. I love giving a name to each and recreating their images with my camera. It is unknown if their original home was a small town in the south of this island, or a fishing boat embarked from east China, and no idea even where it was heading to. They might have been en route to Okinawa, Japan and then California through the Pacific Ocean, we never know. Before being picked up at the shore, they were known just as garbage. They were marked just with a latitude and longitude where they were found. Now they have found a new home and their own names. I believe that sustainable work means something that we continue to do with love and care. To me, this project is more than doing artwork with garbage. What I do is to recreate those items keeping the most beautiful stories inside, and to bring out to the world as the most beautiful models or objects for us.