- CollegeLondon College of Communication
- CourseBA (Hons) Photojournalism and Documentary Photography
- Graduation year2025
Kim Yì Lee explores the invisible relationship of her late mother. Dear Janie... is a letter to her mother about her current experiences and complicated journey to womanhood. Using archival photographs, she has evidence of the displacement of their relationship before and after her mother's death at the age of five. Through Lee's speciality of analogue photography, she navigates the importance of parental relationships to a child's livelihood. Evidencing the impact of her father's health defines the importance of a short-lived childhood and strengthening responsibility and independence at an early age.
Final work
Dear Janie Photobook
The context
In the past, I had written letters to my mother to express my grief. As I initially wanted to do a project about motherhood, I realised I was drawn to the absence of a mother and how that affected me. Since I noticed the varied relationships my aunts and my sister have with their daughters, I photographed them and their care for each other. With the letter I had written, it drew out the anxieties I have witnessed in their relationship regularly and how they may impact me. And so, I included self-portraits and archival photos to contextualise this. Overall, this book combines several aspects of my identity with the impact of my late mother at an early age and has grown into a replicated photo album to commemorate my mother.
A sample of the final prints
For the Graduate show, the photographs are UV printed on homemade flower paper. The flowers are from the photographs from when I was arranging flowers, commemorating my mother, who had arranged flowers every week. They were dried and then used in the paper I had made myself from recycled paper, which I was testing for my photobook.
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