Making Time : Jinjoo Hwang

Do you have a day job? What is it?

I do, I work as a dietetic technician at a private hospital in Los Angeles. I mostly work with renal/diabetic patients along with patients with complicated diet prescriptions or allergies.

Do the people you work with know you are a photographer?

I don't think they do. Or at least there's just very little conversation about photography or art in general in the hospital. I do dress differently from everyone else though, apart from the lab coat.

Does the work you do during the day affect your personal work?

Working as a diet tech and being a photographer demands different skill sets but for me they're somehow processed in the same stream of thinking. I feel like at the end of the day when I sleep, the ideas and impressions in my head homogenize so I don't really consider my job and my personal work mutually exclusive. Recently though, I've been told that if you don't devote your life solely to art or attend a proper art school, it deprives you of your right to call yourself an artist. I thought about that a lot, but now it just sounds obnoxious.



If you could rearrange your time, what would be the ideal balance between your personal and professional work?

I work at the hospital only part-time at the moment, so having time isn't really an issue. It's funny though, there are so many moments at work where I wish it were either appropriate to take a photo and/or I had a decent camera with me. So many interesting, weird, scary, gross, and happy things happen pretty often.

Images: Jinjoo Hwang