This project reflects on memory, distance, and the illusion that time stands still elsewhere.
Living far from home for most of my life, I believed that the people and places I left behind remained unchanged. But a phone call—“Your mother is not well”—collapsed that illusion. When I returned, everything felt familiar, yet nothing was the same. The hands that once guided me had grown fragile. Roles had quietly reversed.
The Urashima Effect, drawn from physics and Japanese folklore, captures this emotional and temporal dislocation. In the tale of Urashima Taro, a young fisherman travels to a world where time appears suspended. When he returns home, centuries have passed. His story echoes the emotional dislocation of leaving and coming back to a life that has moved forward without you.
Through handmade photographic processes rooted in the early history of the medium, I reflect on what it means to preserve what is already slipping away.
This work explores the fragile space between remembering and letting go, where healing exists as both loss and transformation.
