Portraits of Unknown Actors


This project is the “Portraits of Unknown Actors” series.  In this work, actors perform the scene of a play or exhibit their own emotions in front of the camera, and I focus on capturing the expressive moments that each actor reveals with visual language. Through this process I want to exhibit the actors’ intense emotional states and the characterizations of them as actors in their quotidian spaces.

For the process of this project, I usually ask actors to depict certain emotions or act some part of a play. I wait to catch the moment actors immerse themselves into some acting. Actors can present intense and sensitive corporeal movements because they are trained at making specific gestures with their bodies.  In addition, a skilled actor’s expressions have the capacity to effect an emotional connection with viewers. This ability allows actors to suspend the audience’s disbelief.  I am intrigued by each actor’s unique way of exhibiting profound emotions.

As for the backgrounds, I shoot actors in their living or daily spaces where they are relatively comfortable and can divulge something of their inner selves in front of the camera.  The reason that I chose these natural spaces, off the stage is to give the clues about their own lives and real characters. And I also intend to make the contrast between actors’ staged performances and real lives. To show actors’ subtle facial expressions and gestures more meticulously, I use dramatic illumination such as spot lighting, related to theatrical lighting.  This lighting also changes the actors’ ordinary spaces into the stages for them. Through these processes I mean to establish a gray area between the person off stage and the actors on stage.

In this series, ‘actors’ performance in their life spaces’ has the complexity which derives from they are being between the staged image and the portraits in ordinary spaces.  Although acting is a significant element that I utilize for my work, I don’t intend any other narrative or special portrayal of characters that those performances can indicate. The reason I use acting is that it is the essential raison d’etre for actors and demonstrates their identities as actors. Actors’ life spaces and natural costumes help them to reflect the traces of their own character on images. Through this I want to reveal the theatrical expressions and the portraits of actors who are acting in their ordinary spaces at the same time. The relation among acting, actors and their real lives in this work expose the ambiguity between theatricality and documentary or fake and authentic.