Stepping Stone for Peace

Since eighth grade, I have served as the official photographer and curator for Stepping Stone for Peace — a Korean civilian organization that excavates the remains of forced laborers from Japan's colonial occupation and the Pacific War, and lays small memorial stones, 디딤돌, in the neighborhoods where the victims once lived.

The work is not metaphorical. We dig. We carry the bones home. Each stone is a bridge between an unfinished history and the streets that have continued without it. To photograph it is the second act of carrying.