People who pass by the Doosan Arts Center cast a glance at the inside of the window gallery. Inside, an obscure sculpture and huge photo catch pedestrians’ eyes. Then doesn’t the window gallery serve as a show window like a department store’s or shop’s? As you know, a show window is often a showcase that faces the street in order to provide information on businesses or to promote products. However, the show window needs to utilize advanced strategies in order to properly display the products. It not simply a place to deploy them without any strategy. The Doosan Encyclopedia describes a show window as “a place where store managers attract passers-by into their stores by drawing attention and arousing their purchasing needs, not simply deploying the products.”

The obscure sculpture and humongous photo that are displayed in the window gallery attract pedestrians. Maintaining acute tension between each other, they catch the eyes of passersby. Interestingly, the obscure sculpture is white, while the humongous photo is black (strictly speaking, it is navy blue). Since their sizes are equally enormous, it’s easy to make the gigantic window gallery, already seven meters tall, more noticeable. They excite pedestrians’ curiosity, because no one knows what the white sculpture is about and what the gigantic photo is aimed at.

First of all, let’s look at the photo. It is panoramic, one meter and fifty centimeters wide, three meters and eighty centimeters long. It looks like a wilderness with a winding path meandering through a broad, flat expanse, while daylight remains. To a passerby, it may be a vast wilderness when the sun rises. So to speak, it may be from such a wilderness with a sinuous path that Ubermensch is about to appear, seen in Yuksa Lee’s work. Or maybe that Ubermensch has already appeared somewhere on the path. The passerby takes one step forward to the big black photo. But wait! Isn’t the broad, flat expanse the mud flat that ebb and flow make? The S-shaped winding path on the flat is nothing but the waterway.

Now let’s look at the white sculpture. It seems to be rough pieces, unlike the clean space of the show window. The curious passerby edges down toward it. The sculpture consists of two pieces, tied with a thick string; thus it is one object. The string is nearly white, faded, as if it had been exposed to the sun for a long time. Furthermore, these tied sculptures are partially damaged here and there. The passerby takes another step forward. Aren’t all sorts of shells, like speckles, embedded in the surface of the white sculpture? He comes closer to it. Oh, my! The sculpture is not made of white granite or marble, but white Styrofoam! That’s right! The white Styrofoam is nothing less than a buoy.  
     
Why? Why is a buoy, along with a mud flat photo, displayed in the window gallery? What is the relationship between the buoy and the photo? Maybe the photographer doesn’t use the objet (the buoy) for her direction, in order to maximize the function of the show window? What is the function of the show window? This is exactly what I quoted as the function of the show window from the Doosan Encyclopedia. What? You already forgot? Alright! I will quote it again for you, so you remember it: “a show window is the place where store managers attract passers-by into their stores by getting attention and arousing their purchasing needs, not simply deploying the products.”
If that is true, then is it the reason why the photographer displays both the buoy and the photo in the window gallery to attract passers-by into the Doosan gallery? Then aren’t they simply “bait” to make the passers-by the audience? The Doosan Encyclopedia definition is more about the direction of show windows: “directors should design by getting a sense of the season and being sensitive to the latest trends. It is more effective to reveal business contexts symbolically rather than simply to display product samples. Sometimes, there are cases that improve the enterprise image by trying bold experimental space directing.”

The mud flat and the buoy – these two allude to the sea. Then, is the reason why the Doosan Gallery displays them in the window gallery in the middle July because it is no less than the summer holiday season? However, the mysterious thing is that the buoy displayed in the gallery is a sort of “marine refuse” because of its age and damage; thus, it loses its practical function. In spite of that, the photographer tricks passers-by into recognizing the “refuse” as art-work by directing it with a large mud flat photo in the white cube (window gallery). If so, does it mean that the buoy is an “artistic” one, not a “marine” one?

The Doosan Encyclopedia defines the buoy as “a floating device, used for navigational aid.” So to speak, the buoy is a sort of sign established to allow boats and ships to navigate safely, and to caution against dangers to navigation, such as rocks or sunken vessels. Therefore, buoys symbolize safety, but also warning. Then, what is the artistic buoy?  Perhaps it’s an artistic sea route, like an artistic direction that an artist pursues? The artistic buoy and the mud flat photo are displayed together in the window gallery. Then is the photographer who produced the mud flat photo rashly suggesting a photographic direction?

As you see in camera ads which say, “Everyone can be a photographer,” more than ten million people take photos in Korea. Today, Korean photo club members crisscross the entire nation, taking photos and posting tons of photos on their online galleries (digital galleries), as if they are capturing entire landscapes. Therefore if a modern photographer displays scenery photos, people will easily treat them as an anachronism. Needless to say, there are lots of mud flat pictures among scenery photos taken by amateur as well as professional photographers. To most photo club members in Korea, Suncheonman is the number one place for mud flat shot.

Most of them are scenery photos that contain “S-shaped sunsets”; that is, S-shaped waterways on mud flats with the sun in the sky. Others take pictures of Suncheonman drenched in golden sunset tones in the late afternoon. They enthusiastically take photos that show the shape of the mud flat exposed at low tide (like a whaleback), and the skin of the mud flat (that looks like metal). Of course, there is a photographer who waits until people gather to take photos of the S-shaped sunset, then drift away from the place. The photographer believes that the so-called “magic-hour” begins once the sun sets. They pull the trigger to capture the pattern of the waterway along with the beautiful crescent moon in the dark cobalt-blue sky.
   
However, the mud flat photo displayed in the window gallery is neither the ‘S-shaped sunset’ nor the mud flat photo with the moon in the sky in the ‘magic-hour.’ It is literally ‘the mud flat photo’ that contains only the mud flat while cutting off a portion of the sky. How did the photographer take it? He or she must have taken it at a higher ground than the flat (about four meter high) in order to show the perfect view of the waterway on mud flat. Furthermore, the photo was produced through bold editing. That’s right! The mud flat photo is not a panoramic photo. The top and the bottom, almost half, of the original photo are cut out. It is an edited photo, like a panoramic photo.

Why would the photographer have done this? Is it because the beauty of the sunset or the moon could overshadow the beauty of the soggy mud flat? I think that the photographer couldn’t see the scenic view of the mud flat as only a beautiful one. It is because she hasn’t considered the mud flat as just a place for photographing, but as a workplace for living. If so, isn’t it true that no one can take such photos unless they experience the mud flat firsthand? They must be someone who lives or has lived near the mud flat. Accordingly, they couldn’t have overlooked the village women and the fishermen who do hard work at the mud flat long for hours at low tide in order to dig out clams and crabs in the spring, small octopus in the fall, and oysters in the winter, while taking pictures. The mud flat, “the garden of the sea,” is also “the garden of labor” as well as “the garden of hope” to the fishermen. Does the mud flat photo in the window gallery contain people’s wishes for overcoming suffering and looking forward to the future?  

Let’s go back to the starting point of the mud flat and the buoy photos. I argued that the staged buoy with the mud flat photo must be an “artistic buoy.” But then if the photo, unlike other mud flat photos, conveys the flat as a workplace for a living, then can we think that the buoy, staged along with the photo, is displayed as a “photographic” buoy at least to the photographer? If this is true, then do they dare to suggest a direction to the future of photography, filled with unforeseeable problems? And then, does the photographer consider their photos as a sort of “photographic” buoy?

The Women with a Camera 
 
The photographer bravely tries to reinforce their image by making an experimental space production. However, the photographer’s identity has not been revealed yet. Who in the world is this person any way? The passerby really wonders who he or she is, while stepping over the door of the Doosan Gallery. Yes! The person who steps over it is no longer a passerby. They are now the audience. Then isn’t the mission of the window gallery accomplished?

Once the audience enters the Doosan Gallery, a short hallway appears. The title “HYUNJOO SON: ODYSSEY IN ANMYEONDO,” is printed on the wall of the hallway. Therefore, it is Hyunjoo Son who worked on the mud flat photo. Well, Hyunjoo Son, as a professional photographer, is an unknown figure in the photography world. It seems to me that the Doosan Arts Center does not make empty promises in the sense that it has found and supported artists who have been active in a variety of art genres. So, who is she?

She was the fourth-born of three sons and two daughters (and the first-born daughter) in Anmyeondo in Taean-gun, Chongnam Province, in 1965. She remembers that her father was a farmer and a scholar for Chinese, while her mother was in charge of farming for her family for all her life. Her father told her daily affairs that occurred in his village, as well as numerous folk tales passed from generation to generation, village to village, such as Dangsan, Jourtgae, Noroottang, Guksabong, Marlundle, Parlhakgol, Yongcheongol, Sambong, etc. She excelled in literature and fine arts enough to receive multiple prizes in drawing and essay contests from her second year in elementary school to her last year in high school. She originally wanted to be a painter, but majored in Korean literature after words of encouragement by her Korean literature teacher at her middle school graduation commencement. She said, “You will be really a great poet when you grow up!”

 She didn’t leave the island until she was 19, when she graduated high school. It would be rather more appropriate to say that she couldn’t. She had always wanted to escape the isolated island. She sincerely hoped to leave for the mainland because she knew how hard it was to live as a fisherman or a farmer there, heavily affected by the weather. Thus, she strove to reach the larger world. Her plan to go to a metropolitan city like Daejeon by the time she graduated her middle school failed because of her father’s disapproval. However, in the end, she was able to leave the island due to her university admission. She swore that she would never come back again.

She married Jeongnam Choi, a graduate student, in 1989 when she worked as a university staff. In 1990, she applied to Kyunghyang Daily News, and joined the company. Afterwards, she worked for 20 years in the editorial department. She then won the Photo Editing Award of the Year by Photojournalists, for an article with a photo in the front page and a short article at the bottom of the page in the weekend edition, entitled “Slowness and Rest,” in 2004. The photo was about an image of pure children in an alternative school freely passing by a footpath between rice fields. She edited the article unprecedentedly, breaking stereotypes. She won numerous other awards for the article. Then she received an award from The Korea Copy Editors Association with the privilege of graduate school at Dongguk University’s the College of Communication Studies. Therefore, she entered in 2006 and graduated in 2008.                  
 
Hyunjoo Son is often called a wine columnist, food columnist and a travel writer. She wrote a weekly column about wine for Kyunghyang Daily News in 2003. Since then, she has written about wine for various media. Therefore, she has a nickname, “Korea’s first wine journalist.” Then she published a book, Wine and Rest (Forbook Publishers), in 2009. Interestingly, her wine column covers both wine and food, unlike other wine columns in Korea. She says, “Because wine is in the category of food, there is no way not to learn about food - if you learn about wine. In particular, whenever I took a winery trip abroad, the locals gave me a taste of their wine and gourmet local cuisine.” Naturally, she has been more interested in local food. She published another book in 2012, Travel into Seasonal Tables (Artbooks Publishing), after traveling around the country for two years. Since then, she has continuously written columns for newspapers and magazines on seasonal foods, receiving another title of a food columnist.

She resigned from the Kyunghyang News Daily where she had worked for 20 years and returned to her homeland, Anmyeondo, the place she had sworn not to come back to at the age of 19. She went around Anmyeondo about thirty years after her departure. She resolved to become a photographer while touring the island. She gave her work to the world through group exhibitions from year 2011: “The Face” (Jeongdong Gallery) in 2011; “Mosel! Nature, Terroir, People” (Hillstate Gallery) in 2012; “Grand Cru-Wine Art Exhibition” (Daejeon Trade Exhibition Hall) in 2012; “Miso_Seoulkkot” (Floating Cloud Gallery, Citizens Hall in Seoul) in 2013; and “Dasitamsaek” (Choongmoo Arts Hall) in 2013. She gave her first private exhibition in London in 2014, with the title “The Island Is a Buoy” (Gallery MOKSPACE) for which she received attention from the British photographic society. Thus “Odyssey in Anmyeondo” (Doosan Gallery) is her first private exhibition in Korea. She has a five-year career experience as a professional photographer. However, she worked on photography for a long time before that. She received a gift, a Pentax film camera, from her father on the day that she entered university, after incessantly begging him for one. As she became more interested in photography, she took classes in it. Since then, she used to pull the “trigger” at every opportunity. Of course, the place she exhibited her work for the first time was not on the ground, but on paper. Some examples are the photos that are in her books. Those are the photos she took when she visited various regions abroad, and travelled all over Korea.


Odyssey in Anmyeondo: An Epic Photo Exhibition 
 
Now let’s enter the exhibition hall. The hall is a single space, 16 meters long, 12 meters wide and 3.5 meters high. Hyunjoo Son displays her 119 small and large photos in this single space. The largest photo is 2 meters long, while the smallest one is A4-sized. Interestingly, the name of a place is posted on the wall on each side of the hall: Hwangdo, Anmyeonam and Jeongdangri are on the first wall, while Dokgae, Lararmdo and Nudongri on the next, Youngmok, Baramarae and Saetbyeol or Kkotji on third wall and Naepasudo and Gijipo on the last. What exactly do these names mean? 
 
Yes! These twelve words are the names of Anmyeondo’s regions. Furthermore, they are all located on the seashore. The area from Hwangdo to Youngmok is located on the eastern seashore of the island, while the area from Baramarae to Gijipo is located on the western coast. Therefore, if you walked to Gijipo, starting from Hwangdo, you would arrive at Hwangdo again. If the audience follows the photos of the regions in order, then they go around the island along the seashore as it is displayed in the hall. Of course, the Anmyeondo trip is a sort of “image travel” through photos. This is why Hyunjoo Son names her exhibition “Odyssey in Anmyeondo.” What? But then, aren’t the entrance and the exit of the Doosan Gallery the Anmyeondaegyo Bridge? If so, then you have already passed it.
 
There are 119 islands in the Taeanbando and Anmyeondo is one of them. Of course, Anmyeon was not originally an island. The region became an island when the Joseon Dynasty built a waterway, cutting the land in the area between Sinonri in Namyeon and Changgiri in Anmyeon town in order to easily transfer tribute from the southern provinces to Hanyang (now Seoul), as well as to stop widespread looting by Japanese pirates, in the reign of King Injo in 1638. A bridge was built in 1970, about 330 years later, connecting Taean-gun and the island, so Anmyeon was connected to the mainland again. Anmyeondo is the sixth largest island in Korea, being 24 kilometers long and only 5.5 kilometers wide. As she mentioned, the black mud flat is on the western side of the island, while the silver sandy beach is on the eastern side. Since the seashore is a Rias coast, the coastline is irregular. Its circumference is 120 kilometers.

Hyunjoo Son explains that it takes a full 15 days to walk around the island along the coastline. She did it in the fall of “Odyssey in Anmyeondo” consists of photographic images of her adventure stories when she went around the coastline of the island, like Homer’s Odyssey. She confesses that “it was not an easy trip due to tribulations and suffering.” Therefore, the “Odyssey in Anmyeondo” is a sort of an epic photo exhibition which expresses her views of the world and her life.  

Hyunjoo shows her skills from her 20-year-long editing career in her artwork, such as the editing of the headlines and the pages of the newspapers. She places the 119 small and large photos, like the 119 small and large islands of Anmyeondo, on the wall of the gallery, as if she edits the photos on the pages of the newspaper. Then, she adds about 100-word-long texts below about 60 photos. Therefore, the sides of the exhibition hall looks like four pages of a newspaper. I may look at her amazing editing, similar to the one when she won the Photo Editing Award of the Year by Photojournalists. She took millions of photos while working in the editorial department of a newspaper for 20 years. They are largely summarized by two sentences: “I chose the truth of documentary photos and posted a preposterous photo on the front page.”


Going Beyond the Dichotomy of Photojournalism and Photo Documentary  

Now let’s take a look at these 119 selected photos from the 30,000 that she took while she went around the island during two times, once in 2010, and again in 2014. I mentioned that those 119 photos were classified as twelve regions’ names, from Hwangdo to Gijipo. Therefore, I guess that she classified those 12 regions first, and then the 119 photos accordingly. But then, you may realize that the photos taken in 2010 and in 2014 are all muddled up together. Why? Why does she mix batches of photos with a five-year gap between them?

Hyunjoo said, “When I went around the coastline of Anmyeondo for the first time, my camera was an observing tool rather than a tool for aesthetic thinking. Therefore, in my diary of observations about the island (photo diary) there were objets, visible in my eyes and touching my heart without my consciously thinking anything. One day, when I saw them, I realized that they were all garbage. I asked myself, “Why do I repeatedly take these types of photos? At the time, I thought that my preference was a bit eccentric, rather than thinking that this garbage would be my aesthetic objets. Thus, I decided to try to solve my question, going around the coastline of Anmyeondo again in 2014. It was just before I had my private exhibition in London.”

If Hyunjoo is right, is her “Odyssey in Anmyeondo” a kind of a photo documentary taken by her when she walked along the borderline? The derivation of “documentary” is from the Latin documentum, which means “enseignement”, “lecon”, “exemple”, “demonstration”, or “modele.” Therefore, the word nowadays is mainly used when people mention recorded history, recorded evidence in historical records and legitimate documents. Needless to say, documentary also means “providing only objective truths” without editing or inserting fake elements. In other words, documentaries are “records as they are.” Doesn’t that mean that documentary photos are those that capture reality as it is?    
         
What? Then are straightforward photos in the territory of photo-journalism? Some think of the difference between journalistic photos and documentary photos as the difference between fact and truth. In other words, photo journalism pursues facts, while photo documentary seeks truth. Photo journalism emphasizes specific purposes that report certain facts and scenes or functional aspects via newspapers or magazines, while photo documentary refers to the medium of artistic expression that shows a photographer’s view of the world and art, as well as the realm of photo journalism. So, who dares to conclude that the photographer who takes journalistic photos does not have their own view of the world and art? Can we say that the photographer who takes journalistic photos is simply a camera man?

Now let’s go back to “Odyssey in Anmyeondo.” I mentioned that she added roughly 100-word-long texts below about 60 photos. Why does she add these texts to half the photos, but doesn’t add any text to the remaining ones? If you see the photos with and without texts, you will be able to realize that those photos were taken in different years. For instance, the photos with texts were taken in 2010, but those without them were taken in 2014. Why does she do that?

Hyunjoo’s pieces “Jeongdangri 8486” (2010) and “Jeongdangri 7878” (2014) capture a kitchen scale. Both scales are sitting in the open air. The scale taken in 2010 is new, while the one taken in 2014 is rusty and damaged. Then, is the new scale in the forest in the fall exactly the same as the one rusty and ruined during the winter 5 years later? Is the background behind the scale in “Jeongdangri 8486” different from that in “Jeongdangri 7878”? Right! We can’t conclude that the scale in “Jeongdangri 8486” is the same one in “Jeongdangri 7878.” Furthermore, there is only one scale in “Jeongdangri 8486”, but there are two in “Jeongdangri 7878.”

This fragmentary information shows that rusty and damaged scales as well as new ones are abandoned in the Jeongdangri area. However, I don’t understand why people dump new scales out as well as damaged ones. Then isn’t it true that the scale in 2010 was not dumped? Yes! It seems to me that someone hid a scale in the forest in 2010, while the scales were abandoned at a street corner covered with fallen leaves in the winter of 2014. If so, who hid it in the forest, and why?

“There are always scales hidden in the hills nearby the mud flat where people harvest clams and oysters,” explains Hyunjoo.

Village women always hide scales in the hills when they work to find clams and oysters. Why? They leave them there to sell them more easily to the merchants who come to buy goods in the mud flat area, rather than going home with the clams and the oysters to weigh them. The puzzle of the photo that appeared weird at least to the mainlanders is immediately solved with the text that Hyunjoo provides below the photo. If she displayed these two photos side by side without explaining anything, mainlanders would not be able to understand the background stories of the scales in the photos.

Journalistic photos often play the role of showing a scene as it is, but documentary photos play the role of showing invisible scenes. However, can photos really show a scene as it is? Hyunjoo’s photos easily prove that it is not enough for them to be a tool for proving or confirming facts. Her own way of proving facts is adopting a sort of “docutext,” which combines photos with texts, like the photo essays, often seen in the newspapers. Of course, her docutext that describes the hidden scales near the mud flat could be “public documentary” photos in the sense that the facts about the hidden scales are commonly known to village women in the mud flat region.

Going Beyond the Dichotomy of Photo Documentary and Photograph Art
 
Now, let’s focus on the statement that photo documentary is the genre that shows invisible scenes. This is premised on intervention by a subjective point of view, because the documentary photographer couldn’t completely remove their intention and choice, even if they pulled the trigger towards real reality, not fictional objects. If so, doesn’t the truth of the documentary photo depend on the photographer’s subjective viewpoint? And then, isn’t it meaningless to discuss the distinction between photo documentary and photographic art?

Now, let’s use an example to illustrate private photo documentary from Hyunjoo’s docutexts. Her photos “Dokgae 4078” (2010) and “Dokgae 8033” (2014) seem like a mismatch. The earlier two photos “Jeongdangri 8486” and “Jeongdangri 7878,” have one thing, scales, in common, but “Dokgae 4078” and “Dokgae 8033” seem to be independent of each other: an elderly woman on a concrete floor and a bamboo tree at sea, respectively. What is Hyunjoo trying to say through these two photos?            

First of all, let’s look at “Dokgae 4078.” The photo captures a scene in which the elderly woman with her rubber shoes on bends down and does something on the ground. Maybe she is retrieving something from there. She is also holding a stone in her right hand. It seems to me that she is picking up one stone among numerous small stones beside the floor, and is drawing something on the floor with it. This is because we can see a white line drawn by the stone on the floor. What then is she drawing? Why is the elderly woman behaving like that? Hyunjoo kindly adds this text below the photo:

“Why are you taking pictures? Whose daughter are you?” She was quite concerned about me, since I looked dopey, wandering around alone. Furthermore, it was almost dark, but I also lost my way, didn’t I? She picked up a stone and began to draw me a map. She dispelled my fears. This episode happened at Gumulmok in Joongjangri. I had wandered around too much because it was the first day of the trip. 

Now can you understand what “Dokgae 4078” is about, or in what situation the photo was taken? Although this may seem tangential, the origin of the “BoonggiPoongurjae” (a ritual for a big catch of fish) on Hwangdo flashes across my mind. Hwangdo is an inhabited island, located in the northeastern sea of the northernmost part of Anmyeondo. A long time ago, a fishing fleet from Whangdori went out on a foggy day. It became dark. They lost direction, and went adrift. The fishermen, trembling in fear, saw a shining light from somewhere. They followed the light, and it turned out that it came from their own island, Hwangdo. They were curious about the light, so they went to the place where it glowed. There was a big snake in the Dangsan, and the light came from the snake’s eye. Thereafter, they built a shrine and worshipped the snake. This is the origin of “BoonggiPoongurjae” of Hwangdo today.

Now let’s take a look at “Dokgae 8033”, next to “Dokgae 4078.” The photo is about a bamboo tree in the middle of the sea - a bamboo tree in the sea? Of course, the tree cannot live there. Then, what is it? Oh, yes! The bamboo is a buoy. As you may know, the bamboo is standing on the mud flat, not under the sea at low tide. Yes! The fishermen put the bamboo tree on the flat at ebb tide. They go out to fish at high tide. When they come back, the tree signals that they are near home. Therefore, the bamboo tree is the buoy that shows them their way home. As the light from the snake’s eye was a kind of buoy to the fishermen who lost their way, so the elderly woman was a sort of buoy to Hyunjoo when she lost her way.

“Dokgae 4078” has its own story, while “Dokgae 8033” does not. Therefore, “Dokgae 8033” induces the audience to make stories. In other words, “Dokgae 8033” elicits the audience’s imagination. The bamboo tree, standing alone, looks lonely. Furthermore, flurries of snow add more loneliness. However, the tree is the hope that shows the fishermen their way home in dense fog, on the boundless expanse of the water. Similarly, what can it be other than hope to Hyunjoo who has lost her way when the elderly woman appears in front of her? Do you understand now why Hyunjoo edited “Dokgae 40783” and “Dokgae 8033” side by side?

I remarked that the truth of the documentary photo could depend on the photographer’s subjective view point. However, can we say that this applies only to the documentary photo? The truth of photographic art also depends on the photographer’s subjective view point. Hyunjoo pays precise attention to this point. Her photos look like documentary photos, but in fact they are photographic. In that sense, she decisively rejects any attempt to try to separate photo documentary from photographic art.      

Die Sinfonie der Insel

Anmyeondo is often known as a vacation spot. Therefore, most Anmyeondo photos are mainly beautiful landscape. Common examples of such landmarks are the Halmibawi and Harabibawi Rocks in Kkotji. The glow of the setting sun at these places is considered one of the three most magnificent views of the sunset on the west coast of Korea, along with Chaeseokgang on Byeonsanbando, and Seongmodo in Kanghwa. However, if we see the photos that Hyunjoo has taken in the area of Kkoji, there is no single photo of the glow of the setting sun at Halmibawi and Harabibawi Rocks. Rather, there are a lot of photos of “refuse,” such as damaged buoys, military tableware, etc.   

“There must be a military base around here, I conjecture.”

By the way, I could not find any photo of Anmyeonam among Hyunjoo’s photos, even though it is a famous place that people know about the name of the region. The small three-story temple is located on the eastern side of Anmyeondo. If you look at Cheonsuman from Anmyeonam, you can see the two Fox Islands. Photographers like to visit them, especially in June, because of the spectacular rising sun between them. However, in Hyunjoo’s photos of the Anmyeonam area, there is no such photo of the sunrise between the twin islands. The floating bridge between Anmyeonam and the Fox Islands is also famous, but she does not have any photos of it either. Her photos at Anmyeonam include only the jars of kimchi buried near the hermitage for future use, clams in their dilly bags, a television set abandoned in the seashore, and damaged Styrofoam buoys.

“What are you doing here?” seems like a genre of the modern fine arts.

That’s right! Hyunjoo took her “abandoned refuse” photos in all 10 areas when she went around the island, as well as Kkotji and Anmyeonam. These garbage photos are one of her main themes in her photo collection. They are of a broken canoe abandoned in the mud flat, a broken mirror, kitchenware from a dented kettle to a rice bowl, both still useable, a bottle of Coke, a safety helmet, a light bulb, a large bucket, an abandoned plastic buoy, etc. Why did Hyunjoo turn her eyes on this “garbage” dumped in the shore? Does she want to bring up questions on environmental pollution?                

“A bottle of herbicide, Gramoxone, a toxic chemical, is littered in the shore. We’re in big trouble.”

Hyunjoo said in an interview that “while it is definitely environmentally problematic that islanders’ daily supplies drift out to sea, these objets are in the process of going back to nature, while having numerous life stories, getting rid of or keeping memories.” Then in an interview with me, she said, “I thought that, even if they are considered garbage from the island, they are the island of today; their presence represents the islanders, and they are in the final stage of entering an ecological cycle of the island, like humans. And damaged buoys floating on the water become garbage on the island by losing their value. The buoys resemble our lives, wandering aimlessly in the sense that they are washed up by waves, lonely and desolate, wandering around the island. I imagine garbage in two aspects, positive and negative.”    

Islanders’ daily supplies drifted out to sea - their garbage - are not “trash” to Hyunjoo, but the objets that reflect the islanders’ numerous life stories. Isn’t the garbage abandoned on the shore “our self-portrait,” as she puts it? Then, her “Odyssey in Anmyeondo” contains a journey that makes us answer the question of “Who am I?”  
 
Beads of Sweat, an Inner Secret in Mysterious Beauty

As I quoted above, Hyunjoo states that she took objets that touched her heart, without thinking about anything. Those were all photos of “garbage.” She asked herself: “Why do I repeatedly take these types of photos?” And as she casts back to those moments, she wonders why she could not think that “garbage” could be “aesthetic objets.” Therefore, what she really wanted to do, when she decided to go around the island along the coastline again in 2014 was to demonstrate just that. Then can we say that if her camera in 2010 was a tool for observation, her camera in 2014 was a tool for aesthetic appreciation? No! The 2010 camera was dichotomously classified as either tool for observation or for aesthetic appreciation, but her 2014 camera became the tool for observation as well as aesthetic appreciation at the same time. Let me explain this by using a specific example from her work of art. If you are really curious, then please keep reading.    

“Youngmok 5279” (2014) is a photograph of a sparkling objet in a vast field. It is like a fantastic photograph of space that captures a planet among stars in the sky. As you go near the photograph, you will realize that the stars in the sky are stones and broken clam shells and the planet is a plastic buoy. But the skin of the plastic buoy breaks out in pimples. If you come closer, then you will know that those pimples are barnacles. What? Are you asking what the green seaweed that looks like mold on the skin of the plastic buoy is? That is enteromorpha prolifera (sweet laver). Barnacles and enteromorpha prolifera symbolize the track of time.          
Moreover, the buoy and iron rod slantingly studded in the mud flat are leaning against each other. The head of the iron rod and the ring of the buoy are tied to each other with a metal wire. Accordingly, when the tide rises, the buoy might start to float on the sea water. Then, the iron rod that was slantingly studded in the mud flat might stand upright at high tide and the buoy also might cling to the iron rod, not the flat. However, if the buoy connected to the rod had kept floating on the surface twice per day, the rod might have gradually become slanted, due to the repeated ebb and flow.       

In spite of that, the rod is not that long. Its length shows the degree of the increase in sea level during high tides. In other words, when the tide comes into the mud flat, where the rod is embedded, it will not rise to the top of the rod. If it does, the buoy won’t be a sea marker helping fishermen navigate. Yes! It is a marker for marine fish farms. Clams live under the plastic buoy. Thus, village women go with baskets to the place where the buoy is located during low tides and dig them out, while breaking into a sweat. In this respect, the buoy is a livelihood marker for the islanders.

However, Hyunjoo notes, “This buoy is not only a sort of sea marker for marine fish farms, but also a warning sea marker.” The buoy is a protest. It is a struggle to survive and to protect the fishermen’s livelihood. The island has become a tourist spot; thus, many city people crowd together there on weekends. However, this is an uneasy situation for the islanders who do clam farming, because their living is threatened. Therefore, this buoy is the livelihood marker for islanders, as well as the warning sea marker to tourists. Anmyeondo is no longer an island, where the inhabitants live comfortable lives, “sleeping restfully.”         

As mentioned at the very beginning (while looking into the photographs displayed in the window gallery), I mentioned that Hyunjoo couldn’t have overlooked the village women and the fishermen who had to work hard at the mud flat for long hours during low tides, when she pulled the trigger towards the mud flat. In spite of that, I interpret Hyunjoo’s photographs of the mud flat as having a double meaning as “the garden of labor” and “the garden of hope” for islanders. Also, her mud flat photos include islanders’ wishes for overcoming their lives’ harsh realities and having bright futures. Is this the reason? Hyunjoo’s “Youngmok 5279,” looks like a photograph of a fantastic space.       

The color of the plastic buoy is often white, black, yellow or orange. However, the color of the plastic buoy in “Youngmok 5279,” is more like the salmon pink, often seen just before a sunrise. Yes, it is! That is the color produced after going through color calibration work. Come to think of it, the color of the mud flat is also more like the royal blue, often seen just after a sunset, not a gray color. This is also a color achieved after calibration. Of course, Hyunjoo might adequately cut out the top and the bottom portions of the photo with color calibration at the last stage before the final photo is printed. If so, maybe the reason why “Youngmok 5279” could look like a photograph of a fantastic space is because the photo has been produced through color calibration and bold editing, right?

If I am allowed to compare the color of the plastic buoy that is more like salmon pink just before sunrise to the color of wine, I will recall Tavel Rose. Tavel Rose? Hyunjoo, as a wine columnist, describes it as follows: ”It is a wine that you deeply in love with even before you drink it because of its breathtaking beauty when the glass is filled. It is the fatal temptation of salmon pink, reminiscent of red salmon.” By the way, what makes the color of the plastic buoy - more like salmon pink just before sunrise - the color of unutterable beauty? Yes! It is because the color of the buoy is perfectly matched with the color of the mud flat, royal blue, just after sunset.

However, the beautiful photo of the mud flat isn’t just about being aesthetically pleasing. For instance, its beauty is mysteriously associated with a salty tang and a fishy smell. Maybe the reason why Hyunjoo’s mud flat photo is beautiful is because the fishermen’s sweat during their hard work, when their hands get chapped and backs bowed, is ingrained in it. Whenever Hyunjoo leaves her home to take pictures on the mud flat at dawn, she meets with villagers who get up at daybreak and sweat to dig out oysters and clams from the mud flat. She knows that the island’s women’s hands have no time to be smooth even during the winter. Accordingly, whenever she pulls the trigger on the mud flat, she might have ambivalent feelings. To her, a photo of the flat mud is like a winemaker’s sweat in the vineyard being present in his bottles.

The Mud Flat, Islanders’ Workplace and Playground at the Same Time   
 
In spite of all that, Hyunjoo beautifully expresses the mud flat where the village women work with sweat running down in beads in her photos. Why? Before finding an answer to this question -- even for the sake of answering the question -- let’s go back to the other questions. She swore that she would never come back to the island again when she left at age 19. However, she returned to her homeland in 2010, 30 years later. In that year, she went around Anmyeondo’s coastline. She did it again 5 years later. First of all, what is the reason why she came back?

Hyunjoo says, “Living in Seoul was nothing special to me, and I might have longed for the island, the lifeline, like the umbilical cord. I had a lot of things that I wanted to do during my later life on the island. The sense of isolation from the outer world, the narrow confines of island life, the natural ecology and the unique environment -- these restrict people’s activities. However, those things play an important role in making an artist, a writer or a photographer. This is because the artist confines themselves on the island, and tries to build up inspiration that will be the basis of creative work.”    
                                                                                                             
Ironically, the reason why Hyunjoo left the island is the very reason why she came back to it. For example, she, who left the island because of its innate sense of isolation, came back to it because of the sense of isolation that she felt outside it. The curious teenager left her home to explore an unknown world. As a journalist or a traveler, she visited many parts of the world. Of course, the unknown world she visited might have been an exciting place. However, the world she had already explored no longer held any curiosity. Is Anmyeondo then an unknown world? To answer the question, I should ask why she went around the island’s borderline in the same year when she returned.

Hyunjoo says, “I realized that I didn’t know anything about the island. Even though I had lived there until I was 19, and my ancestors have lived there from generation to generation, and although I heard many stories from my father, I had never thought about looking into every inch of the island or meeting and talking to villagers. I thought that I should fully understand the island.”

Interestingly, the very reason why she went around along the coastline was because Anmyeondo was an unknown world to her. She left the island in order to overcome geographic limits, but she came back. Why? The isolated island 30 years ago was a limit to her, but the same place after 30 years was now limitless. In other words, the familiar Anmeyeondo of 30 years before became unfamiliar with the passage of time.       
     
Why did she get it into her head that she didn’t know anything about the island? What happened? In the year she returned, one day her mother came home after a long day harvesting clams. But her mother was barefoot. What exactly had happened to her? 

As Hyunjoo tells it, “According to her explanation, she dug out clams while sitting on the mud flat alone during low tide. However, she got caught up in the job, without recognizing that the tide was coming in. She told me that, when she finally noticed the rapidly rising tide, she barely escaped from the flat. She realized that she had lost her boots, after she ran away. They might even be somewhere on the mud flat right now. Therefore, I forbade my mom from entering the flat after that. Then, she begged me holding my hand and explaining to me, ‘This is my only joy. If I can’t go to the mud flat, my only source of joy, then what am I supposed to do?’ Is that her only source of happiness? Is the mud flat her playground? She really got me!”

At least to Hyunjoo, the mud flat was the islanders’ workplace. The mud flat was where the fishermen dripped their sweat into the ground, with chapped hands and backs bowed. To Hyunjoo, it was the place where islanders went to at daybreak, working up a sweat to dig out oysters and clams. Now, she realizes that the mud flat is the islanders’ playground, too. After she listened to her mother, she realized that she had only half known about Anmyeondo -- her home. Therefore, she went around the island along the coastline.

What might she have learned about the island when she went around it? What might she have realized after her two trips? Needless to say, her answer is in “Odyssey in Anmyeondo.” That is, her exhibition is her “new” Anmyeondo. Wasn’t the answer already included in my earlier question (why does Hyunjoo express the mud flat, where the village women work with sweat running down in beads in her beautiful photos)?        

Beyond Work and Play 

Hyunjoo’s “Beneath the Wind 9692” (2014) is a panoramic photograph of a huge objet on an open grass field. The objet appears to be a huge unidentified object, floating on an attractive emerald-color swamp. Maybe the unidentified white objet is sinking into it. By the way, the shape of the unidentified objet catches my eye. The cylindrically carved objet resembles a male reproduction organ. Furthermore, because a singular ring seems to cover the edge of the glans, it further implies this. I step forward to the photograph, wondering what the unidentified objet is. What? The objet is chapped everywhere and damaged. What was it before it was damaged? I take a closer look. The objet is made of Styrofoam.

Hyunjoo says, “When I saw it at first on the seashore, it seemed to have somewhat of an aggressive shape. Thus, I changed the color of the sand into green. The sand looked like a sea covered with water-blooms. And the white buoy looked like a dying fish due to a lack of oxygen.”  

The unidentified objet is nothing less than a useless buoy for marine fish farming. That’s right! It is a damaged Styrofoam buoy. It is often referred to as a “white devil.” Because the Styrofoam buoy is relatively cheaper than other types, lighter and more buoyant, it is widely used. However, that is precisely why its collection and disposal are difficult, since it is easily broken and does not decay well. In particular, the Styrofoam buoy comprises the great majority of marine garbage produced in Korea. One of the critical problems of Styrofoam is that it contains fatal toxic substances. Thus, fish or birds die from eating broken Styrofoam, and this, in turn, adds to marine pollution.

According to Hyunjoo, “Beneath the Wind 9692” is a photograph after color calibration. This photo shows when the Styrofoam buoy arrived at the sandy beach, after being used in a marine farm, getting damaged, and then drifting off to sea. She changed the color of the sand to green, so making the sandy beach look as if it was the sea were covered by water-blooms. This is a phenomenon that makes the color of the water green, resulting from the high density of phytoplankton. In general, it originates from blue-green algae occurring either in rivers or streams. The water-bloom destroys the ecosystem as its production pollutes water and decreases its oxygen level while killing fish.

Hyunjoo remakes the sandy beach into water-blooms, through color calibration, so that the floating buoy covered by them looks like a dying fish because of the low level of oxygen. Of course, her work is for conveying “environmental pain” to the audience. In spite of this, the buoy in the photograph looks like a huge unidentified objet, floating on an attractive emerald swamp or sinking into it, at least to me. This is because the water-blooms that Hyunjoo recalls look more mysterious than dirty or muddy. If that is true, then isn’t the reason why the “white devil” looks like a mysterious objet because she transforms the sand into water-blooms? However, because of that reason, fatal danger lurks in this mysterious beauty.

Towards a Third Photography    
 
Hyunjoo’s “Beneath the Wind 9692” aims for “a third photography,” beyond the dichotomy of fact/truth and reality/imagination. The third photography alludes to a third space beyond dichotomous space. It reminds me of Michel Foucault’s “heterotopia.” This is Foucault’s neologism made by combining heteros with topos. Utopia, with the prefix U meaning “negativity,” is an imaginary place, but heterotopia means a utopia that actually exists. Hyunjoo’s “Beneath the Wind 9692” is located between an imaginary place and a Utopia existing in reality. If so, is her photograph “photopia” between utopia and heteropia?   

Hyunjoo’s third photograph is an unavoidable strategy for responding to a camera’s programming. While taking mud flat photos that anyone can take, she responds to the camera’s automation in order to produce beautiful photographs that express labor and play together. She takes photos that capture real places. However, since such photos are only results of the camera’s programming, she makes the real places look like imaginary places through her post-production editing. Does she fight back against the camera programming in order to report that there is fatal danger in the beauty that the camera’s programming brings about ?       

I mentioned that the camera, to Hyunjoo, is a professional tool for photographic art as well as for play. As you know, the camera is a play tool with intelligence. Of course, most people do not feel difficulty in using a camera (taking pictures), even though they don’t know much about its complicated structure. This is because, even though people do not known about the structure or basic principles of a camera, the camera does everything once they click the shutter.

Of course, even though you can obtain knowledge on the camera’s several functions, such as aperture, shutter speed, ISO, camera noise, image quality, automatic focusing, and wide-angle lens, the photos that you take are made by the camera’s programming. And, despite how well you take photos, you will eventually take them, according to the programming. Therefore, if a photographer wants to escape from the camera’s automatic system, they will have to fight against the play tool (camera) with a play tool.

However, this mission is not easy to accomplish, because you will have to find weaknesses in the programming if you want to escape from the camera’s automation. Thus, Hyunjoo focuses on editing as a counterstrategy for responding to photos’ unavoidable programming. With 20-years of long experience as a newspaper editor, she responds to the camera’s automation through bold editing in her post-production work. Hyunjoo’s “Youngmok 5781” and “Beneath the Wind 9692” resist camera automation through her frame transformation via color calibration and cropping. No! “Beneath the Wind 9692” is created not by cropping, but by screen extension.

I mentioned that Hyunjoo’s latter photo is a panorama of a huge unidentified objet floating on an attractive emerald-color swamp. However, the photograph is not a panoramic one. It is not a lengthy distorted one transformed by cutting the upper and lower portions of a photo, like “Youngmok 5781,” but, by expanding water-blooms, people feel that it is. Some might consider Hyunjoo’s bold editing as straying from the right path. However, whatever they call it, the right path, maybe the very evidence that they adapt themselves to the camera’s automation. Then isn’t Hyunjoo’s “Odyssey in Anmyeondo” “Odyssey in Photograph”, a full-length epic photo exhibition, where she takes photos, goes around Anmyeondo’s coastline and travel towards a third photographic way at the same time?