I have chosen to look at a photograph by Nikki S. Lee, a Korean artist who mainly focuses on film making and photography and uses herself for some works. This particular image is apart of a project Lee did called ‘parts’ which is a series of photographs of her with a male in the imagine but he is always cropped out and not to be seen.The male is always someone she knows and is close with, but taking them out of the picture gives it a whole different feel.
In this photo from the series in particular, even though she knows the person with her Lee still looks very distance and almost like she doesn’t want to be there, like she’s uncomfortable.

Whereas if you could see the whole image, they may be both looking at the same thing, but without being able to see both emotions from people you can’t work out what their relationship would be. For these photos Lee had her friends take the pictures on a camera that would make the photos as simple as possible, this gives them all a really authentic feel to them because they don’t look forced, just a natural piece of someone’s day.

With that being said, I think the pictures still have a lot of emotion behind them regardless of if it’s good or bad, they still make you feel something because of Lee’s facial expression. The way Lee is holding her body also has a large impact on the way you can portray the image because she has kept her arms to herself and she is enclosed just to one space, rather than having her hand on the male next to her or just having any interaction with him, which adds to the feel she isn’t close with him even though she is.

https://alchetron.com/Nikki-S-Lee