Always There by AmandaBomsterJabs in Los Angeles

Through my journey, I’ve come to understand that life’s gains often come with losses. Adopted as an infant and raised in the U.S., it wasn’t until I met my birth family in South Korea that I fully grasped what I had gained—and lost—through adoption. Meeting them felt like a collision of two parallel lives—the person I became through adoption and the version I could have been. This encounter deeply reshaped my perception of my own life. I began creating a series in black and white, using pen, ink, and pencil, inspired by the Korean countryside. The mountainous landscape where my birth family lives serves as a metaphor for the convergence of these divergent timelines, exploring the tension between presence and absence.