Loved into Being

Loved into Being is an ongoing series that reflects on time, growth, and the quiet moments that shape who we are. Photographed over several years as my daughters grew from the intimate spaces of home into the wider world, the work traces rhythms of daily life, changing seasons, and the subtle shifts of becoming.

These photographs were taken during the experience of raising my daughters in the United States, apart from family in Korea, a time marked by both solitude and tenderness. Later, these images were revisited through the tri-color gum bichromate process, using gum arabic and dichromate-based emulsions, a 19th-century alternative photographic process. This process involves hand-coating paper with light-sensitive pigments and exposing it multiple times, allowing images to be slowly constructed through layered color and time—much like memory itself.

With watercolor-based pigments, the images hold a painterly quality while remaining photographic, existing between painting and photograph. Through this process, each image is constructed as layered time, reassembling lived moments.

At its heart, this work is a letter to my daughters, a wish that, as they face challenges in life, they will grow strong and resilient, carried by the love that has shaped them. It also invites viewers to remember that, even in the most ordinary moments and in life’s most difficult times, we are shaped, held, and sustained by love.