All images copyright Johnny Lee Park. All rights reserved. 

When working, I typically take a mixed media approach, often using one medium as a basis for further developed imagery on either traditional surfaces or in the computer. Subject-wise, I have a simultaneous attraction to and horror of the relationship between humanity and its technology. I try to reflect this contradiction in my imagery by combining figurative/organic elements with mechanical/ architectural/technological elements, retaining all the while, hopefully, some of both the beauty and the revulsion of this part-seductive, part-dystopian vision.

This contrast and combination of the organic and the mechanical serves then as a metaphor for the attempt to strike a balance between humanity and technology. On the other hand, despite this bleak, dystopian view, there’s also a lot of beauty in the world. My photography tends to express this more hopeful view of things.

So there’s a lot of tension, then, between these two opposing ways of seeing the world through my work. Though I’ll never be any sort of optimist, as long as the need to create thrives, I’m willing to admit there are reasons to keep going forward, and maybe the crushing sense of desolation in so much of my work can be defied. After all, there’s no other way to find out than by finding out.