Witness

Witness explores politics not as spectacle, but as atmosphere. Through quiet observations made over a decade in the U.S., the images reveal how power lingers in ordinary spaces and daily gestures.

Witness examines how political power exists not only during elections or protests, but as a constant presence embedded in everyday life. Rather than focusing on dramatic events, I photograph quieter conditions such as architecture, gestures, waiting, preparation, surveillance, and routine. Police standing casually on marble steps. Tourists framing the American flag through their phones. A podium assembled before anyone speaks. A broken windshield suggesting violence without showing it.

These images observe how power operates atmospherically through space, structure, and repetition. Government buildings, fences, monuments, and controlled landscapes are not only symbols; they are environments people move through daily. Politics is often procedural, staged, ordinary.

As an international student who has lived in the United States for over ten years, my position remains both inside and outside. I am familiar with these spaces, yet never fully belonging to them. That distance shapes the work. I am not documenting spectacle or claiming authority. I am paying attention.

Witness proposes that political presence is not confined to moments of eruption. It is built into architecture, posture, and ritual. By slowing down and observing without urgency, I attempt to show power not as an event, but as a condition we inhabit.