Photographing the Unseen from the Seen
It is said speak the truth, recording moments as they happen. But at times, photographs also lie and it doesn’t take an incredibly technical technique to make it happen. A shift of the angle here and a cut of a section there are all it takes for a photograph to convincingly reveal something that isn’t there, or portray what’s there in a different light. Photographs do, rather quite often and casually, lie to us. Regardless of their ability “to lie”, it doesn’t change the fact that photographs still capture what is seen. But every so often, it also captures what is not seen, through the lens of an artist.
An, Jong-Hyun's Passage series is one that starts with visible things. His photographs hold seemingly normal yet interestingly “abnormal” sights: The unexplainably mystifying aura that surrounds Jongmyo, the burial grounds of the kings from the Chosun dynasty flashy and flamboyantly bright neon signs; the Boshingak bell that seem to amazingly "shine" in the dark night; and a phone booth jutting out of the dirt pile of a construction site as if it's an artifact being unearthed by archeologists. An was amazed at how the unexceptional streets of Jong-ro and neighboring areas of Jongmyo at times would appear to him as strange and foreign sceneries and captured these on film.
Jong-ro. If you think about it, Jong-ro is a rather unusual area. As Korea's first park and the very place where the Declaration of Independence was recited, the energy of the time that used to fill Tapgol Gongwon is nowhere to be felt and now only the old, languid seniors visit the park to idle their time away. The main streets of Jong-ro have rows of learning academies, theaters and various industry stores while the backstreets are studded with motels with obscure signs. When darkness falls, the nightlife wakes up and Jong-ro transforms itself into a quite different place than it was during the day. In the evening, the alleys are filled with working men and women looking to find momentary escapes from their burdensome realities at drinking holes on the once and now vanished Pimat-gil. The younger generations trying out various learning academies, while the elders sit around and fondly reminisce their glory days of the past. Walking from the Gwanghwamoon intersection past Jong-ro 3-ga and Jong-ro 5-ga, towards the neighboring area of Jongmyo, one will notice the subtle differing classes of people, sentiments, and the remnants of time periods that make up the Jong-ro area.
Night. Jong-ro especially comes alive at night. When the sun sets and the neon signs are turned on, the backstreets of Jong-ro puts on another face. An walked these night streets of Jong-ro with his camera. Even the most normal of sights can come across as strange and exotic, when viewed with an artificial backlight.
That is how An captured the Jong-ro we know and didn’t know. Perhaps this is why it may seem like his photographs are pictorial records of Jong-ro. But it doesn’t end with what we are able see. The pictures embody in them a Jong-ro that is made up of differing times and sentiments, and are the recordings of the unseen that we are able to feel through what we see and the unfamiliar and disparate times and space that results when viewing Jong-ro from a different dimension. An calls this a “passage” of sorts, like the passage that leads life to death, switches the personal to the public and bridges the “Continuous to” the “End”. The lighted Boshingak bell, the single lit lighting that illuminates the park, and the sliver of light seen at the corner of a dark forest seem like a mechanism that leads the viewers into a space not of this world, making them leave the ground they are standing on and into an imaginary space while twisting their own reality into seeming like it is unrealistic. So actually, Passage is not a pictorial record of a city. It is not a record of the seen, but that of the unseen told through what we see.
Shin, Bo-Seul, Curator, Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Judge of the 7th KT&G SKOPF
