During her last year of college at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, photographer Ina Jang began weaving paper cutouts into her images as a way of problem solving. “I started it because I was struggling to make images at the time,” the Brooklyn-based photographer says. “I was forcing myself to like everything—from the people I was working with to locations where I was shooting, so I started getting rid of the elements I didn’t like in the picture.”
Among her inspirations is Martin Margiela, a notoriously private fashion designer who avoids being photographed. “I admire how he visually deconstructed the language of fashion,” says Jang, who wanted to create her own language through the series featured here. “I liked the idea of using optical illusion and the two-dimensional quality of photography. I always go back and forth in experimenting with the combination of analog and digital manipulation in photographs. While working on the series, I enjoyed making images that allowed me to explore both approaches to photography. Additionally, having an anonymous character in the images have given me more freedom to relate myself to them. I wanted the images to effortlessly create its own language.”
From portraits to still-lifes, Jang covered up faces, shapes and spaces that she didn’t like and used paper to make new images. “I started with white space and filled it with stuff I like, such as painting or illustration,” she says. Jang graduated in 2010 with a B.F.A in photography, and though she’s no longer working on this particular series, Jang says she’ll continue incorporating layers into her photographs. Some of her new work is included in the gallery above, and her more recent work with paper cut-outs will be exhibited at the Hyères Festival of Fashion & Photography beginning April 27 in Hyères, France. “I’m still really into shapes and cutouts and collages,” she says. “So I think you’ll always see part of that in my work.”
Ina Jang is a Brooklyn-based photographer. Read more about her here. Her work will be exhibited at Christophe Guye Galerie in Zurich March 29 through June 2 and at the Hyères Festival beginning April 27.
