Swan Moon's Swan Moon

"Swan Moon's Swan Moon is a diaristic portrait of youth, identity, and performance set against the faded glamour of 1990s Los Angeles. Swan Moon revisits her teenage years as a Korean American growing up in the cultural shadow of Hollywood--where cinema's myths loomed large and personal history blurred with fantasy. While alternative youth were raving and Larry Clark's Kids was defining a generation, Moon and her friends were doing something profoundly divergent: dressing in vintage clothing, staging impromptu, cinematically adjacent environments, and living out an aesthetic that was wildly out of sync with the time. The work feels improvised, playful--shot with flea market props and makeshift lighting which carried with it an amateurish charm. Moon wasn't imitating Cindy Sherman--she had yet to know that name let alone see the iconic Untitled Film Stills--but she was drawing directly from the language of cinema, attempting to insert herself and her circle within the medium's canon. The photographs echo mid-century domesticity--gestures borrowed from the 1950s and '60s--but subverted through the awareness and often overwrought angst of the 1990s. Sexuality here is present but subdued, expressed with a tenderness that would soon be obliterated by the onset of the Internet's rise. There's humor, style and an earnest make-believe that is refreshing in light of today's hyper self-awareness and image saturation. Designed with a nod to Hollywood's silver screen, Swan Moon's Swan Moon includes a curated soundtrack and character credits at the book's conclusion. An afterword by the esteemed writer Chris Kraus brings clarity and context to Moon's love letter to a nostalgic Los Angeles--her version of the city and its youthful inhabitants that feels both deeply personal and entirely lost to time." -- TBW Books.