We all have valuable memories and creations. For Ethan Luk ’20 and Derek Ng ’20, their valuable creations are in the forms of personalized websites, reflecting their journey and emotions.
Luk runs an online gallery called The Waiting Room that displays his photography and words. The Waiting Room serves two purposes: one is to provide an online portfolio of the work he did over the summer, and the second is to show people what it means to be a teenager in this day and age. Luk created his website at a summer program at Brown University. He always brings his camera wherever he goes and takes pictures of people or things he finds beautiful. “I have always wanted to create a full body of work, so I took advantage of the whole creative environment of Brown and pushed myself to complete this project over the course of one week,” said Luk.
Luk’s inspiration for the website came from hearing his friends’ discussions about not knowing what to do in life and the frustration of having to live up to all the expectations of being the “perfect teenager.” He wanted to create a project that documented where he is as an artist right now and to shed light on the complex emotions of the teenage experience. Luk shared, “I thought that it was so important of me to create a complete project that could mark as an important milestone in my growth as an artist.”
Luk hopes kids his age will find it relatable and realize that the most important thing about their teenage years is to be willing to feel confused and to think freely. Luk explained, “This sentiment of feeling confused and not having it all together is reflected in the ‘shower thoughts’ segment of my piece — the shower thoughts are tiny segments of words that represent my thoughts.”
People have been very supportive of Luk’s work, and many have reached out to him on Instagram and Snapchat, saying that they find his pieces to be meaningful and relatable. To Luk, this is the ultimate praise. “I don’t want to reveal my personal interpretations of the piece because that would take away all the fun from viewing my website. One thing I learned at Brown was that images/photography is so effective because it is polysemic. Polysemic means that something has multiple meanings. I want people to have their own take on my work and to start an inner conversation with my pieces,” Luk said.
Ng, like Luk, runs a website of his own. His website, named “dereksfault,” is a home for everything he does, ranging from writing to taking photos. There are blog posts detailing whatever has been new in his life. Ng explained, “It’s an important part of me because it’s sort of a journal on who I am, at least as a writer and an artist. I guess it documents how my thoughts, my style, my ideas have changed as time passes. Also, when I read the words I write from my different experiences, it’s like I’m thrown back in time and reliving them again, and it always makes me feel nostalgic about all my history. It’s a bittersweet feeling, but that’s the cool thing about writing and photos: it has the power to make you relive moments long ago.”
For various reasons, Ng would grow frustrated with every journal he wrote, and never ended up writing to the end of them. He hoped that creating a website would eliminate this frustration.
Ng does a lot of writing in his free time, mainly because it is something that really speaks to who he is. Ng shared, “Not long ago, I wrote an essay named ‘Letting Go,’ a reflection on how my grandmother’s passing affected our family, as well as looking into some of the themes that, well, make us who we are: human. I talked a little about my family’s history, about our values, about our beliefs. I guess putting the essay on the website means sharing it with the world.”
