An artist's journey of loss and retrieval as documented through photographic and philosophical mediations on time, memory, and loneliness.

As a student in France in the 1980s and 1990s, Chun Wai wandered the streets and alleys of Paris, experiencing its cultural icons and backstreets and taking snapshots. Chun's photographic negatives from this time were stored in sleeves unknowingly deteriorating in the Hong Kong humidity, and were rediscovered in their fractured and crumbling form thirty years later. Through examination and careful restoration work, Chun found the erosion of his own fleeting, suspended memories reflected in these photographs.
Printed in black and white, the restored images exhibited under the title Adrift in Time verge between abstraction and dream-like reality.

“Adrift in Time is a monologue and travelogue of time. The book is divided into two sections. The images in the first are figurative, while the latter images are abstract. They were all selected from photographs that I took when studying in France. Though these images were taken over thirty years ago, I recall them like it was yesterday. Over the years, some of the photographs have been damaged by mold; however, they remain free from the boundary of preconceptions, and have been opened up to interpretive possibilities. The damaged images are removed from the chains of time and memory. I can’t help but question: what then is the essence of photography?
Elements of photography and literature are interwoven, yet they are not the same. I wish to expand the realm of poetics with the compelling features of both, merging them into my contemplation of life during such a turbulent era. In the images and texts within Adrift in Time, I attempt to trace time, in which all phenomena emerge and perish, along with the relationship between subject and object. In this way, photography becomes a form of contemplation, a reflection on life and existence.”
- Wai Chun