Project 2: Different, Not Less

Project Description:

My second project want to continue on the old photograph series in the first project, but this time is based on the stories about the perceptive abilities of our family. A person with a sounded sensational ability are usually hard to understand the other person’s inability of sense, even they are family. We shared the same memory and sadness, yet we don’t feel, and do not understand each others feelings. We are so different that we are not able to perceive through each others brain, and sensational receptors; and that is why misunderstands and prejudice had occurred. My project evaluates the question: what does it mean by having these disease as a human being? What kind of side effects might that condition brings besides physical sufferings.

Story1:

My fathers’ younger sister, my aunt was diagnosed schizophrenia when she was still a young girl. She used to have hallucinations, and couldn’t help herself from hurting the people around, even during my mom was pregnant. My mother’s resentment to her was insoluble, the family was ashamed because having a “psychopath” in family is very humiliating back in the days. Several years after not seeing my aunt, I tragically was told that she committed suicide during one of her onset, it again became a more unspeakable family taboo. I have no access to her photographs because they were all locked up so that my grandparent will not be heartbreaking while looking at them. But I know my aunt was just having a brain illness which just like many others physical illness a person can have.

Family Tree. pdf

Story 2:

My brother had a corneal transplantation surgery three years ago. He was diagnosed with keratoconus, a rare disease that can completely blind the patient’s eyes. My whole family drooped into a deep melancholy, because at the time the organ resources were scarce in the hospitals in China. Finally through friends and connections, my brother finally got two pieces of corneal from a young donor(as heard). From the moment my brother has regained his sight, things changed. He became more sensitive, which I mean mentally, about his eyesight. He will always depressed if he sense a small change in his eyesight. This thing also changed my mind. I became a donor as I register my new license at DMV. I understand that we should not take our perceptive abilities for granted, as how our family has treated our aunt or me to myself.

RGB.pdf

story 3:

Since I was very little, I was constantly bothered with otitis media, which is a inflammation in the middle ear. It caused me a lot of pain, and I wished that one day I can replace my ear with a metal ear so that it won’t be painful anymore. The disease also caused constant hearing loss, and tinnitus with low-pitched drumming sound, or high-pitched beeping sound. Having otitis media is like having thousands of ants crawling and biting in the ears, and bugs humming inside your head. After curing from otitis media, my ears are still irritated, yet I seemed get used to such hearing defects which I do not know is caused by psychological or physiological reasons.