A photograph keeps a moment, or so we like to believe. During a journey some years ago, Korean translator and artist Kathy Lee began taking every photograph twice, separated only by the briefest interval—a practical precaution that gradually became a peculiar protocol. Presented together, these almost-identical images make tangible something photography cannot capture: the time between them. A gesture has shifted, light has moved, somebody has disappeared. The world is already elsewhere. In The Translator’s Task ll, photography begins to resemble translation, caring for an in-between that can neither be possessed nor made fully present. Lee’s quiet images attend to ordinary things, accidents and imperfections, yet between each pair another image seems to hover—one that was never taken. Time appears through its withdrawal: not the moment preserved by the photograph, but the irretrievable interval slipping between one shutter and the next.

Having worked extensively with translation in contemporary performing arts, Kyunghoo Kathy Lee approaches translation as an artistic practice in itself—a space of attention, displacement and encounter. Her interest and research is concerned with the gaps between languages, words, images and moments, which is a space for rhythm and transformation. ‹Almost All Cases› and ‹a second chance› are her independent publications.