‘Our Seams' photographer Diana Albrecht explores the tension between tradition and modernity
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Korean adoptee and photographer Diana Albrecht is set to debut a new collection of work at Public Functionary’s northeast Minneapolis gallery called “Our Seams” on Saturday.
In fall 2020, Albrecht launched “PLACED,” her debut photo book showcasing stories of Korean adoptees in the U.S. and the meaningful places they connected with.
After PLACED launched, Albrecht discovered she was addicted to pursuing personal, creative explorations at the intersections of queerness, transnationalism and photography. She quickly started searching for her next big project.
Initially, Albrecht considered photographing adoptees trying on Korean hanboks — a traditional dress with origins dating back hundreds of years to Korea’s dynastic periods. But as she explored the idea, Albrecht realized she wasn’t comfortable picturing herself, or her subjects, in such a rigid mode of fashion.
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In a recent interview with MPR News, she asked: “How do people wrestle with this relationship with a more traditional sense of heritage and their modern, more contemporary selves?”
This question — and Albrecht’s discomfort — became the driving idea behind “Our Seams.”
For “Our Seams,” Albrecht photographed 12 groups of people dressed in their own interpretations of the tension between conventional and contemporary. The collection of film and digital portraits feature vibrant outfits and subtle stylistic flair, with Albrecht’s hand-painted backdrops enveloping each subject in a dreamy sea of color.
“Color is something I got really obsessed with over the last year — typically my work is pretty moody and dark and romantic.”
But following the pandemic, Albrecht says her eye shifted to emphasizing joy and celebration in the work she creates.
Albrecht says she loves how participants brought their own interpretation of style and culture. “Each story evokes a different type of mood and motion,” she notes.
Some participants chose to emphasize more traditional outfits, while others mixed and matched both old and modern styles.
“I photographed a mother and her two young daughters, and they all wore traditional skirts of their Indigenous tribe,” Albrecht says. “But the younger girls paired it with their Converse sneakers, hoop earrings and little beaded friendship bracelets.”
There’s an undeniable fashionable aesthetic to the portraits in “Our Seams,” thanks, in no small part, to Albrecht’s work as a creative director in advertising spaces. Yet she still wants the show to be approachable to all viewers.
“I want the average person walking down the street to see it and be like, ‘I see myself in that,’ because I did not get that as a young person.”
“Our Seams” runs from April 22 through May 5 at Public Functionary in northeast Minneapolis. There will be an opening reception with the artist on Saturday, April 22 from 6–10 p.m.
