It’s frighteningly easy to find oneself overwhelmed by the unending deluge of global politics and uncertainty that we beam into our eyes with dull regularity. It’s easy to get caught up in the things we read about as if we are a supporting member in the predicaments at hand. It’s tiring.
Which is why I personally find myself drawn again and again to the personal in photography. Not an ideal “lifestyle” thing that’s become a parody of itself now- but a level approach to photography where intent doesn’t have to go beyond “this is how my life looks sometimes”.
Sean Marc Lee, a very talented photographer and friend of mine, recently self-published a wonderful little zine titled Neko Neko Ai Ni- - in it we see how his life looks a lot of the time- a life populated with Carina, Susu, and Bao. Susu and Bao are the stray cats which the human couple rescued- Carina, while human, comes across as sort of a casual feline herself- often not wearing much more than the cats themselves do. The pages reveal a domestic life set against beautiful blue walls in an apartment in Taipei.
Neko Neko Ai Ni is sort of a spinoff of a group exhibition which Sean, Masayuki Nakaya, and myself held in the autumn of 2016. Cats and the Women Who Love them (whom we Love Too) was the theme. Like our exhibition, Neko Neko Ai Ni revolves around love and cats and humor and photography and the domestic acts of living they’re all intertwined by. It’s a joy- you’ll find that time spent with it is a far better experience than refreshing SNS pages online.
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Sean Marc Lee / website / tumblr / instagram / prev. on TCS
NEKO NEKO AI NI (order HERE)
A5 (148 x 210mm / 5.8 x 8.3 in)
40 pages, full color offset printed
150gsm matte coated saddle stiched
Edition of 500 signed and numbered copies.