HERE/THEN

Here/Then

Here/Then (Here & Then) is a personal project I began in 2020, a year that felt like a glitch in the matrix, where time stretched and collapsed all at once. Days blurred together, yet entire months vanished in an instant. Half the planet was lockedown, and it felt as if we had skipped from March to May, as though an error had rewritten our timelines. We expected the world to change, to reset, to begin anew. Instead, we found ourselves perpetuating the same patterns, moving forward yet strangely tethered to what came before.

This project explores the duality of time and presence, the feeling of being in two places at once—both physically and emotionally. Through photography, I capture overlapping moments, where past and present coexist within a single frame. Shadows of ourselves linger, echoes of what was and what is intertwine. We resonate like an echo, as if time itself is reverberating through us. The paradox of being—of existing both here and then, simultaneously—is ever-present. Can we ever truly leave the past behind, or do we merely build upon it, layer by layer?

Ubiquity

These images reflect the quiet contradiction of time: occupying the same space but never quite meeting. Our past selves hover in the background, ghostly imprints of who we were, while our present selves continue forward, forever moving, yet never truly separate. It is a visual exploration of memory and presence, of moments that persist even as we evolve.

But even as we adapt, we remain bound, still trapped in a frame, confined within the borders of time, as if framed in a square. Each photograph captures this strange entanglement, where we are both moving and still, familiar yet distant. The ubiquity of our past is ever-present, woven into the fabric of our present, making it impossible to truly escape. The past lingers, not as something behind us, but as something we carry, woven into our every step.

Five years later, I find myself here, or perhaps then, publishing these memories from the past. The images remain, frozen yet fluid, reminders that even as we move forward, we are always tethered to the moments that shaped us. Through this project, I invite viewers to question their own relationship with time. Are we just our past, or do we just to exist within its echo?