Eric
Cung

Selfie-tourism, identity and lies.

Eric Cung presents a strong body of work in the intersection between performance art and photography. He makes a comment on selfie tourism and examines it in a surreal way with a sense of irony: - “I take holiday selfies. But with a twist… It is also an exploration of deception, identity and personal integrity in a digital era. What right do we have to our own identity when the face, the first and strongest expression for recognition, is exploited?” 
In the large-format tradition of German photographer Andreas Gursky, I often take a series of pictures which I fuse together into a single, high-resolution image for big prints. Two strong influences on my work are American painter Edward Hopper and British graphic designer Storm Thorgesson. At an early age, I recall viewing Hopper’s “Soir Bleu” with its melancholy, white-faced clown sitting at an outdoor café among a disconnected group of people. That image really stuck with me. I was introduced to Thorgesson when I first saw the album covers designed for Pink Floyd.
What sets my work apart is its ability to capture a strong surreal feeling and the associations it creates, enabled in large part by my obsession for craftsmanship and determination to execute challenging ideas. People often think my images are composites from stock photos. They get blown away when they understand that I actually travelled to all these locations and have indeed taken the time and effort to make it real. It says a lot about how we perceive our world today, with staged lives and fake news.
Weeks before I started this project died my father. We hadn’t seen each other for years, and our relationship wasn’t the best, to say the least. In past years, we’d often ended up arguing and even got into a fight. In sorting out his belongings, I found myself sitting down browsing through old family albums with images of my sister and me as kids. There we were, my Dad and I, laughing and fooling around. He was carrying me on his shoulders. Both of us were smiling, looking happy. Fast forward a decade or so and now I’m missing in most of the family pictures. Moving forward yet another decade and it’s only Mom and Dad. And then, in the last album it’s just him – my Dad. He travels to all these fantastic places all alone, puts his tripod up and takes a self-portrait. There’s no one but him in the photo. No one to share the experience with. It felt a bit sad. What happened? Looking through the albums in one go I saw my Dad aging from a young father to a lonely old man.
Photographer Susan Sontag writes in her book ”On Photography” about how the photographic portrait shows the painful reality of aging. ”Photography is the inventory of mortality. It shows aging. The link between photography and death haunts all photographs of people.” 
With a mask the clown character stays the same. He never ages.
Swedish born Eric Cung has an MFA from The University of Arts, Craft and Design (Konstfack), Stockholm. Represented by The Photo Gallery, Sweden.