"Documentary"

In order to document something, you should have prepared with questions that you want to find out ragarding particular issues that you are eager to know about. However, how to document some issues by only photograph them without any words delivered? Should I photograph things regarding the issues that I want to show from my perspective? or photograph what viewers want to see? Perhaps that's the hardest part to document something, especially when the things that people want to know and want to see are different from what I want to show and what I want to tell.

For the sensitive issues regarding gender and identity issues always have been controversial over the centuries. So many people documented regarding these issues, but people always keep their first judgments on these issues, and not many of them changed their judgments or thoughts toward positive side of the issues. If they understood people with gender issue at the first time, then they keep their understanding toward those people with gender issue till last, however most of people who never accepted the idea of people with gender issue, they are not allow themselves to change their negative feelings toward people with gender issue to positive.

Since I want to document regarding transgender issue, I want to document what I want to show rather than what people want to know. In this way, I will be very excited to document regarding the transgender issue although it will be definitely controversial. I want to show pros and cons for being transgendered and the reason why they have to become opposite sex. Also I want to document them as one of as "person", not as "transgendered" person.

When I first glanced the image, I thought the image was portrait of five men,
but Laura told us that is a self portrait of woman, Hannah Maynard, and she taught herself the chemistry that she enjoyed experimenting with various processes.
Hannah shows five different facial expressions, and her sight was on herself and viewers. From this image, I could tell how women were strong in exploring self portrait back then although not many women had a power to do those things over men's power.
In her self portrait, she's looking at us with powerful facial expression, which reveals her power, and other face of herself reveals the calmness, which reveals herself as a feminist.

Possible Concepts..

For this project, I want to talk about transgender issues. What influences made them to become transgender, the cons and pros for being a transgender, is transgender psychiatrically curable? etc... still need to think about more.

Transgender Issues

I had a hard time choosing a topic for the project. Perhaps tremendous gender issues going on in the society that we don't even recognize. This is because we all lived as ignorant and self centered. We don't care about how others live, but criticize on others different behaviors and life styles because they are different from me. As the centuries passes, people got used to understand some kinds of issues that we always talked about such as gay issues and lesbian issues. However, people still don't accept the idea of transgender issues. Even I still don't want to accept the idea of transgender for the cognitive reason. When we were young, and when we reached the age of recognizing the specific difference between man and woman, we began to learn that man and woman are different. This idea have been taught unconsciously by our parents or others. Also, as a christian, the idea gay and lesbian issues, and transgender issues were very carefully mentioned such as "that's not what God want us to be".

About five years ago, I heard of word "Transgender" over the Korean news channels. This was the first time I ever heard about the word "Transgender". The news announcer said that one transgender woman debuted for actress and it became biggest issue at that time. Although people in Korea became very liberal over centuries, but still consider as conservative in typical issues, the debut of the transgender woman was shocking. The name of transgender woman was Harisu, which was inspired by "Hot Issue". No one knew that she was a man before she told media about her story for her face and body was perfect. Harisu said that she thought herself as a woman since she was young, but she had to attend middle school and high school that only boys allowed to attend. After she graduated from high school, she decided to have an operation to trans her sex or gender from man to woman. Harisu looked overwhelmed and excited while her interview was held, she couldn't hide her happiness for being a woman. Harisu became very famous and lots of documentary films of her came out. People began to understand her, and they encouraged her to live happily as a woman for entire of her life. Also, because of this woman, one of well known consevative countries, Korea, decided to give her new identification card that has "female" on her sex category, and new social security number, which reflects people would accept her as a woman. However, many of people who are very conservative, they don't accept her as a woman. They call her "monster" becuase in their perspect, she's not a woman nor man.

By looking at Harisu's situation, I think it would not be that bad to give a person a new life only for giving them little sympathy and understanding. Also, I think it is our fault to keep our selved into a little cage to be ignorant on others. I don't want to categorize transgenders as mentally ill, but I want to help them to be normal like others before I give my understaing to their situation.