Tokyo #2 by Sean J. Sprague

Pacific Distance is Sean J. Sprague's 3 years-in-the-making photographic investigation into, "treating documentary and travel subject matter in a constructed visual sensibility and style," stemming from, "thoughts of how in the anticipation of viewing a new subject, an individual constructs a view of a place even before visiting." In the images submitted to HHS!, Sean shows us glimpses of this constructed documentary mode in South Korea, China and Japan.

While the style and tone of these images evokes editorial photography (and Sprague has had his fair share of editorial assignments), what is striking to me about these photos is that if there is any intent or agenda here, it's to show us in a non-hyped up manner commonplace and quiet moments in the lives of people who live in large cities on the other side of the world.

Sean writes in his statement that through this project he is also interested in the photographic depiction of "the Other," which can be and is a pretty loaded critical term. When I think about the more canonized treatments of "the Other" that have occurred from a Westerner's eyes looking at people living in Asian metropolises, the temptation to exoticize and/or eroticize cultural differences in image-making is one that is seldom resisted (think Nan Goldin's Tokyo Love, or the early work of William Klein). What is rare and interesting in what Sean has submitted is that we are looking at singularly quiet and banal moments in the lives of these city dwellers: a man checking his cell phone in the relative calm of an underground garage and a businessman on his lunch break squinting his eyes against a too-bright sun as he attempts a little light reading.

Tokyo #1 by Sean J. Sprague

I once had a photographer instructor lamenting that there was no one out there that was making an artistic project of American life as it really is lived and experienced in all its glorious mundanity today. Who is documenting our mega malls, our food courts, our crippling consumer-driven contemporary economic reality? Since that time we have answers in images from great artists like Brian Ulrich and Zoe Strauss. Perhaps if he kept at it, Sean Sprague could do something similar by way of subverting our Westernized expectations of what kinds of images can be made of people living in places like Busan, Beijing and Tokyo.

For a more complete look at Sean's work, take a look at his portfolio on his website.