Eunice Yu

 Eunice started consciously making pictures in her second year of college.  Her experiences with other mediums eventually led her to photography, where she began using the camera to connect with people.  Her first series of pictures was that of the people on benches.  She started to document things, and appreciating them as it was, and not just because she was now looking at it with a camera in hand.  Her work shown here of astronomical spaces and interiors came from a more inward use of the camera.  Eunice began thinking about space and places she can’t actually see or go in real life.  Layers and accessibility are big themes in both of these late works.

Photograph from Seascapes by Hiroshi Sugimoto

When I look at Eunice’s work, I see a transcendence of space in what would be called a window, a hole from one space to another.  The outside world is framed by the interior space in a way that sections it off from the viewer as inaccessible.  The lush green exterior is photographed in a restricted manner purposefully.  In her cosmic images, the exact opposite happens where the subject is photographed so that it appears to be what it is envisioned to be outside of its context.  The bench photographs are the most interesting to me however, without the portrait added to them.  They are some of the most unique and complete images I have seen, and emote a stronger and broader feeling than the rest of her work, although it is all successful. 

Her work of people sitting on benches reminds me of Irving Penn’s studio portraits.  The similarity of use of a constant environment with changing subjects within that environment creates a study of individuals and their interactions with each other, but the styles are different in their message.  The more introverted work is not unlike the work of Hiroshi Sugimoto.  Sugimoto’s work compares more emotionally to Eunice’s than it does formally, particularly the comfort as is felt in the cosmic images.

Two Studio Portraits by Irving Penn