KOO Bohnchang’s Silhouette of Mother and Grandmother

 Lee Jinsook

When I was young, I grew up underneath the lamp.

Waking up in the middle of the night

I saw my mother working on the sewing machine

And my wrinkled grandmother winding thread.

I believed they were the whole world.

(Skipped)

I spent my childhood underneath electric lights.

Looking at the lavish signs of temporary theaters

And the splendid lights from stores

I thought the world was huge. Then,

I came out into the world.

Indulged in wandering from place to place,

I even flew across the sea to the distant places.

I saw and heard many things.

But the more I travelled and the more I saw and heard,

Strangely enough, my perspective became gradually narrower

To the point that only the silhouette of

My young mother with her sewing machine

And my wrinkled grandmother who winds thread

Is eventually left on my retina.

Once again, they became the whole world to me.

Above is part of the poem Silhouette of Mother and Grandmother by SHIN Kyungrim. This poem popped up in my mind as I unfolded KOO Bohnchang’s works from over about 30 years. It depicts in a composed manner the process of self-consciousness that one achieves as he or she goes out into a wider world, grows mature, and finally understands the fundamental features of him or herself. Such awareness of one’s original self does not mean a highbrow, conservative retreat into the past at all. What constitutes “the whole of the world” is the silhouette that remains and it is the task of the next generation to fill the details into the silhouette. We do not simply repeat the past. Instead, the true meaning of realizing “the silhouette of mother and grandmother” is the fact that it can be a new starting point.

In art history, it is not difficult to witness the fact that the past has served as a steppingstone for new progress. In his book From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present, western cultural historian Jacque Barzun points out that the formation of the modern era marked the emergence of a tendency to take advantage of the past in an active manner by reinterpreting past events and creating an ideological framework. The active utilization of the past as a method to form an ideological framework helps dismantle the existing order and actively design the future. In fact, avant-garde artists in the early 20th century shared a fundamental, radical inclination to deny the present and to go back into a deeper source. The ancient civilization of Tahiti provided Paul Gauguin with a foothold for cultural fundamentalism as Egyptian paintings and African sculptures did for Pablo Picasso. The starting point of the Russian avant-garde, which was second to none in terms of radicalism, was actually the traditional Russian cultures that had been forgotten in the wave of westernization.

Such a movement is not mere retrospection, but it becomes truly meaningful when interpreted as “the projection of the contemporary out of the past”. In fact, Russian avant-garde artists like Kazimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky and Marc Chagall, who were fanatical about what is ‘Russian’, came up with a completely new kind of avant-garde that was unprecedented in western cultures. Such an attitude of the Russian avant-garde artists cannot be more interesting in regards to KOO Bohnchang. In the midst of globalization that rapidly swept through the world since the late 1980s, the Korean art industry was occupied with catching up with international norms. Although such a cosmopolitan outlook has been established as an important factor, drawing the ‘Silhouette of Mother and Grandmother’ that lies within the Korean art would offer a chance to capture the fundamental outline of the art industry.

The ‘Silhouette of Mother and Grandmother’ depicted in Shin’s poem can be explained in terms of cultural sociology by the concept of ‘meme.’ Susan Blackmore defines ‘meme’ as ‘new replicators that create cultures’, which are a type of social genes that encompass languages, songs, attitudes, consciousness, technologies, customs and cultures handed down through recreation and imitation. The “Silhouette of Mother and Grandmother” described by the poet is a great example that shows the process of recognizing ‘meme’ by the means of poetry, while in the case of photography KOO Bohnchang’s work is so. How to Capture the Touching Moment(Culturegrapher, 2014), a recently-published book written by KOO, is an in-depth confession about his work and also a precious source that allows a glimpse into the ‘Silhouette of Mother and Grandmother’ melted into his oeuvres.

The purpose of this writing is to materialize the function of Korean ‘meme’ that are inherent in KOO’s oeuvres. We will now look into some of the Korean ‘meme’ that exist in the roots of KOO’s work, who has ‘pioneered the experimental potentials of photographic media.’ Like most avant-garde artists, KOO has also taken advantage of the past in a contemporary way, thereby making new headways. It is such a narrow-minded way of thinking to be content with pointing out the mere fact that KOO pictured traditional themes like masks, white porcelains and pots. Such an attitude may create a distorted perspective. A Korean ‘meme’ surpasses the level of item selection and works in a more profound way. In KOO’s perspective, through which he interprets materials and shapes his images, we discover ‘the silhouette of mother and grandmother.’ We will also find out that it is very Korean, though the artist himself has never touted any Korean characteristics intentionally. On top of that, I will not confine my appreciation of his works to the history of photography. As a contemporary of KOO who has lived through the 20th and 21st centuries, I will try to have my eyes focused on images from other media as a means of comparison in order to find the meaning of KOO’s artwork.

Touching Moment with things with low frequency

Some cameras exist for a flamboyant, sublime moment. On the other hand, KOO Bohnchang’s camera does not. His camera is somewhere not too far from his subject, and focuses on a minuscule moment that no one does. In his book How to Capture the Touching Moment he says that “through photography, I wanted to handle the most universal emotions of human beings and their insights into life rather than big social issues.” The most important task for this was “to capture the fading moments of daily lives, take a record, and embody each and every touching moment.” As his own words explain, ‘moments of daily life’ and ‘touching moment’ are crucial keywords that illustrate the moment KOO’s photography comes into being.

In many of his works, things often play the main characters. In the advent of the capitalist world, things in their neutral definition have disappeared. Things have become commodities. They have become the aggregates and promoters of human desires, and the entire social relationship has been commercialized. Immanuel Kant’s ‘artistic purposelessness’ was an effort to grant an artwork a feature that contradicts that of a commodity. Based on this notion was the theory of the autonomy of art established that transcends the commercialized, capitalist society, but commodities have still haunted the contemporary art like ghosts. Pop art and minimal art of the 1960s were enchanted with ‘commercial aesthetics.’ The ideas of conceptual art and land art emerged in defiance of this trend, but no artist was free from the idea of commodities and the commercialization of art.

Photographer Gursky pictured the grandeur of the capitalist world. Be it the endless row of goods in a 99-cent shop or the showcase of a luxurious Prada shop where a small number of expensive clothes were neatly arranged, the subjects of Gursky’s focus were the colossal capitalist landscapes that keep incessantly expanding. People of previous generations felt the sublime beauty of infinity that goes beyond human finitude from magnificent natural landscapes. However, such infinity is now discovered in the endless sea of commodities and in the gigantic waste landfills that are formed as a result of indiscriminate consumption. This is the crux of capitalist sublimity.

On the other hand, KOO Bohnchang cherishes “the worn out and the forgotten and deserted in time”: mediocre things whose commercial value has long been dissipated, which retain humanity’s stain but lack enough content to be treated as history. Tiny pieces of soap that were nearly used up are an example. What does the artist see in such goods with no capitalist value? KOO liked collecting small things since childhood, and he displayed them in the 2011 Kukje Gallery. He recalls that the most impressive class during his studies in Germany was a still life class, saying that “expressing the fundamental sense of existence is more important than anything else, and when something, whether a still life, a person or a landscape, reveals its natural presence, I embody its story into paintings and photographs through such an approach.” From the photographs of soap pieces hanging on the exhibition wall, we can hear the low breaths exhaled by the sweet pastel colors, the indeterminate but humble appearance, and the vanishing beings. Through KOO’s photographs, we hear the low-frequency sound of minuscule beings, not that of commodities that provoke and promote desires, and touch moment with them. Ultimately, his trivial things are meaningful because they embrace human traces.

It is the Mask series that shows that love for things originates from sympathy and love for human beings. His photographs do not show the performance of a mask dance. In fact, people who have veiled their faces on masks are posing as if they are posing for ordinary portrait photographs. Their poses make us feel that they have become one with their masks. What KOO saw in the masks was ‘a deep sorrow that is innate in the tradition of Korean folklore.’ Although he reduced the significance of the body by blurring its surroundings on purpose, the mask is able to deliver complete stories only when it obtains the human body. KOO’s camera is pulling out the stories of people that exist in things, yet that are not revealed.

The utmost manifestation of the “silhouette of mother and grandmother” in KOO Bohnchang is in his work on white porcelains. The beauty of white porcelains has always been praised as the sheer revelation of Korean beauty. In contemporary Korean art, there are various artists who were captivated by the beauty of white porcelains, especially the moon jar, such as KIM Whanki and KO Younghoon. However, the idea of white porcelains becoming a painting and a subject of photography was a completely different matter. KOO was concerned that “the factual, mechanical nature of photography and the naturalness that is aroused by white porcelains do not embrace each other,” and he eventually made the decision to “dig into the deep, graceful sentiment that flows within the porcelains rather than focus on their exterior form.” As a result, he embodied the breath of white porcelains in his photographs. The white porcelains adjusted with a soft peach pink tone not only expose their feminine curves in an elegant manner, but also convey a highly tactual sensation. In order to stress the indifferent, formal incompleteness of white porcelains, KOO deliberately took photos with a slightly blurred focus. Now they are no longer cold ceramics; they have turned into something that gives out warmth. Although we can only see white porcelains that are well preserved in museums, the appreciation of ceramics including white porcelains is essentially contingent on the sense of touch. This is evident from KIM Whanki’s remark that “whenever I face writer’s block, I touch the big handsome bottom of my white porcelain jar that I have put right next to me and my writing just sorts it out by itself,” and also from the picture of Gansong JEON Hyeongpil dressed in folksy apparel carefully patting his porcelain. As a matter of fact, porcelains were originally part of people’s daily lives, touched and used at all times. KOO’s photographs created visual-tactual synesthesia that allows us to ‘touch’ by watching. It was a new interpretation of white porcelains.

I explained the above for KOO Bohnchang, ‘the silhouette of mother and grandmother’ is not merely about theme selection, but about the perspective to interpret things and form an image. His earlier series on white porcelains are in achromatic color, as in OSK 10 BW PL, 2005, arranged in a way that reminds us of Italian painter Giorgio Morandi’s still life paintings. Morandi whitewashed his objects in order to contain their individual quality to the maximum extent and tried to arrange them in diverse ways. It was a new harmony and a new order that he pursued by drawing countless paintings of the same kind. His work reveals the inner collapse of the western society and the desire for a new order after the Second World War.

In Morandi’s still life paintings, objects are arranged in a very flat, somewhat obsessional manner. Similar to Morandi’s paintings, KOO’s white porcelains are laid out in a rather flat way but there is no such obsession similar to Morandi. Morandi’s still life is obsessively gathered together as if to reflect the post-war mental destruction, without any possibility for them to go independent as individual entities. However in the loose array in KOO’s work, each one of the white porcelains is able to achieve independence at any time. That is because, as pointed out before, he was able to witness and sense the beauty of white porcelains themselves.

Now let’s find out the ‘Silhouette of Mother and Grandmother’ in KOO’s memories. As we trace his childhood memories we can observe an interesting bit of his reminiscence. “One day, my mother while getting herself ready for the ancestral rites in the kitchen called me. She then opened the lid of the rice pot and showed me a fine line of footsteps inscribed on the rice. It looked as if a small bird walked straight on the rice. Mother explained that today was the anniversary of my grandfather’s death and that the bird footprint indicated that he turned into a bird after he had passed away. That was the moment when my particular affection and love for the soul and living things started to spring up inside me.” I assume that many Koreans have heard of this kind of story at least once or twice in their childhood, although it sounds rather superstitious. The important thing is that KOO remembers the tiny incident very well. It was a story where KOO realized the fact that all the things around human beings are not simply impassive, external beings that exist outside of human affairs, but in fact are objects to interact with. Such interaction with things and the world is the core of the astonishing talents of artists. Everyone knows incidents that have already occurred and appeared on the surface, but only those who have a surprisingly well developed ability to sense the trivial stories sent by things in low frequency can become artists.

When Hamlet blurted out his monologue “to be or not to be” in 1601, the Western self detached itself from the nature of the world to become a solitary thinker. The world became subject to analysis and development, and the Western self was no longer integrated with the world. Restoring the relationship between human beings and the world and creating a new relationship were the tasks of art for a long time. Meanwhile, the Eastern world maintained the tradition of integrated thinking that regards matter and ideas as one. This formed the basis of our sense of beauty that enabled us to interact with things and nature. It is the Korean shamanism’s way of understanding the world to experience things and treat them as identical to oneself, rather than to regard them as a subject of external analysis. Though many of such traditions were denounced as superstitions and were thus destroyed amid modernization, a number of scholars studying Korean culture have asserted that the shamanistic world view and the sense of beauty based on it are the essence of Korean culture. Media artist PAIK Namjune also called himself a shaman and created a new type of artist called ‘shaman-artist’. Paik “integrated the Eastern notions of zen and shamanism with cutting-edge technology,” thereby creating a type of artist whose goal is the relationship and communication with diverse, disparate beings in the world. Whichever media he or she makes use of, the most important value to a shaman-artist is the interaction with the world.

“Things that are not easily visible, things that talk to me in an inaudibly low voice, and the inhalation and exhalation of life. I believe that the interaction that I feel while taking pictures of such momentary objects is instilled into the film as a certain amount of energy. If one feels touched by a photograph, it is perhaps because the energy that stems from the object and then hides into the film slightly emerges on paper or book.” KOO’s remarks directly show that the core of his oeuvres is his ability to sense and interact with the world. Through his outstanding ability to sense and sympathize with the breath of beings that are transmitted in low frequency, KOO turns a simple, ordinary thing without commercial value or historical meaning into a humane being that is far from simple.

Gazing simultaneously at existence and absence

In western art history, the representation of the visible world became a task of utmost significance since the Renaissance, resulting in the birth of photography and impressionism. Then, through the middle of the 20th century, scholars such as Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze have continuously made arduous efforts to break ‘the myth of representation and objectivity.’ It has now become common sense that visual art, regardless of the media (whWether it be a painting, a photograph or a media art), has a meaningful relationship with not only the visible world but also invisible things. In his book Life and Death of Image , French philosopher Regis Debray claimed that the birth of a visible image itself is relevant to the invisible being: death. As he claimed, most images were born in the graveside as grave goods.

How to Capture the Touching Moment tells us that KOO has a heartbreaking memory of his father’s death in 1995. He preserved the memory in the photograph of a mouth that breathes out faintly and a tough hand that is solely left with nothing but bones. It is the record of a father who gave birth to the artist, a man who once used to be strong and healthy. We cannot witness our own death. What we can see is only the death of others. By watching other people die, we can remind ourselves of our death. As Regis Debray stated, in the thought of the invisible death of ‘me’, our thinking is enhanced from visible to invisible, “from evanescent to eternal, and from human to divine.” He asserts that human beings have defied death, which leads living things to extinction with “the immortality of images.” In other words, images are a kind of thanatology to cope with death.

KOO came up with his own thanatology with his ability to hear the subtle sound of things in low frequency. He resisted the idea of death through the immortality of images. The lives of entities are destined to finish with death, but those of species are not. The death of an old entity makes way for a new one and is a process of wisdom that allows the preservation of a species almost to the extent of eternity. Since a long time ago, gazing at the change of four seasons and the circulation of nature has been the easiest textbook to understand thanatology. By embracing the beauty of changing seasons, we get to accept our death in a beautiful manner. Although everything eventually ends up with death, it does not mean that they turn into perfect nothing. They leave the traces of their existence, despite the fact that they will eventually be deserted in the battle against time. Ocean, Riverrun, Snow, White and Portraits of Time are KOO’s sensitive thanatology series that deliver “the soundless intensity and beauty” of “the process of circulation and regeneration of life.” The objects in these series obviously fall into the category of “the worn out and the forgotten and deserted in time” that was mentioned above.

In these works, KOO’s images are filled with the abstract nature of death instead of the graphic visibility of life. In Portraits of Time, where he took photographs of the empty plastered wall of a Heian temple in Kyoto, Japan, KOO stares at the faded traces with sympathetic eyes, not at the vivid prosperity of beings. He saw the traces of many things on the empty wall that seems to have nothing. White holds the traces of ivy scattered here and there that had once flourished in summer but now is left without stems. The notion of the circulation of life is about eliciting the scenery of fall in spring, and sensing spring in winter. His perspective points at a being that is left in traces, not at an empty wall of absence. The dots that are scattered like stars indicate that a period of time has passed, but at the same time they are also the traces of a promise that it would someday return. As the passing of time leads snow to melt and sprouts to shoot up, in Snow, black gravel stones show their dark faces here and there on the snow. The artist pays attention to both existence and absence, and both life and death simultaneously. Here, KOO made use of synecdoche as his language: the way of representing the whole of something through a part of it. White and Portraits of Time are not photographs of an entire wall, nor are Ocean and Riverrun images of a distant ocean or water. Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto shot pictures of the horizon from a distant perspective. For his photographs, which are driven by a strong will to include the universal origin of life, it was crucial for him to take pictures with the same format that shows the contrasting factors that compose the world: the water and the sky, regardless of its kind like the Aegean Sea or the East Sea. In order to emphasize the universality, he reversely mentioned each of the specific geographical names as titles. On the other hand, KOO’s ocean appears right before your eyes. It was the continuity of moments and the perpetual movement that are impossible to name that he paid attention to right here at this moment. His camera captured a tiny area of the whole river or ocean and he provides no information about the location where he took pictures. However, since such waves and movements are universal regardless of place, KOO uses a synecdochical language to say that their occurrence is inevitable anywhere in the world.

KIM Bongryeol, an architect who has done detailed research on the philosophical and aesthetic aspects of traditional Korean architecture, points out while analyzing the beauty of Jong-myo “the simplicity that overwhelms both the part and the whole, the transcendental effects achieved by excluding artificial decoration, techniques and manipulation, the things that are gained from abandoning the high-dimensional thoughts that convert absence into existence, and the circular structure” as its characteristics. Synecdoche that infers the whole from its part is possible only on the premise that things were made up of an identical structure. The infinite repetition of small units that could represent the whole seems simple at first glance, but it serves as a lever that changes a part to the whole and a moment to eternity. This is a formative principle that is also evident in the monochrome abstract art, which was a landmark in the Korean art industry. KIM also asserts that “the combination of empty and full (truth and falsity) is a principle of composition that repeats itself in the composition factors of every dimension of Korean architecture. That is, the smallest units of such combination of truth and falsity are between the open floor and rooms, and between the garden and the house. Depending on how these are connected according to size, the place can be a one-room house or a palace with 99 rooms. The simultaneous consciousness of existence and absence is also a social ‘meme’ descended by those who have lived in such a structure for a long time: in other words, ‘the silhouette of mother and grandmother’ that KOO observed.

As in White, the awareness that ‘truth and falsity’ and ‘existence and absence’ each forms a single pair is directly revealed in the series Interiors and Object. In Interiors, there is an empty inner space that is purely vacated. But we do not see it as a really empty space. By all means, we find out some traces of existence in the empty space. KOO’s synecdoche applies here as well so that we become unconscious about the actual size of the garage or the empty box. Something existed there, whether big or small, but now it is gone. Although the title of the series refers to the object itself, what we see in the photographs is the trace of its existence. This leads to the indulgence into an empty space. It is an aesthetic technique that surpasses the obsession into visible beings and enables the consciousness of existence in the state of absence.

The frame of non-western perspectives

In traditional western cultures, harmony was based on the geometric order. Claiming that number is the essence of the world, Pythagoras eventually found the numerical order of the golden ratio that exists in nature. This notion continued on to the Middle Ages and led to the pursuit of sacred geometry. Even the masters of the Renaissance who sought an ideal beauty as well as Nicolas Poussin did not forget this order. If disillusive reality is a disorderly space of dystopia, utopia is a place that consists of order and harmony. This idea can also be observed in photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson’s notion. Saying “the Bible says in the beginning there was the Word, but to me there was geometry,” what Cartier-Bresson revealed in the ‘decisive moment’ of photography was the essence of the world based on the geometric order. In order to show the geometric order, he boldly trimmed the image. As seen in Morandi’s example before, eliminating the phenomena of reality and exposing the geometric order that is hidden in them despite its collapse after the Second World War: particularly the constructive order through perspective, are westerners’ ‘silhouette of mother and grandmother’ that has been inherent in their mind since Pythagoras.

Yet KOO’s “Silhouette of Mother and Grandmother” was different. Ocean, Riverrun, Snow, White, and Portraits of Time are the flat continuation that has no beginning, ending, or order. The idea of continuity through taking pictures of a small part to imply infinity goes beyond the western frame. Even in the Snow series, which are photographs of melting snow on a gravelly field, the actual area included in the photographs is very small. KOO’s images sometimes confuse us because of his synecdochical language that alludes to the whole from a part. The intentionally-triggered size and the resulting confusion lead to the absolute concept of continuity. A flat surface can repeat itself limitlessly. As we can see from an all-over painting where we cannot clearly see where it begins or ends, the surface repeats itself. Be it an ocean, ivy, a temple wall, a rice cake, or a gravelly field covered with snow, they all imply infinite continuity in KOO’s world. If a small thing can be a big one, the opposite is not impossible as well. This is where a lighthearted joke occurs. In the photograph of two tiny flat rice cakes, their actual size may throw us into confusion. This abstractness, like that of a homogeneous pattern, is the visage of a sweet rice cake. While looking at these works, I come to doubt whether it was necessary to discriminate conception from abstractness in such a hostile manner. Mt. Geumgang 02 is a bizarre image of Mt. Geumgang that clearly has KOO’s characteristics. In order to understand the weird image, I looked into JEONG Seon’s paintings of the mountain and various pictures taken by ordinary tourists. JEONG Seon’s Geumgang jeondo (General view of Mt. Geumgang) and BYUN Kwansik’s Landscape of Mt. Geumgang are focused on depicting the majesty of the steep peaks of the mountain and securing a certain distance in order to capture the harmony of a countless number of them. Meanwhile, KOO Bohnchang prefers a synecdochical and flat image. His camera is aimed at the surprising vitality of pine trees that have managed to grow in the cracks between the rocks and not at the magnificent peaks of the mountain. His perspective on ivy and waves has met the solemnity of Mt. Geumgang and has turned into a hymn that praises the strong vitality in a soft tone. This does not necessitate any three-dimensional structure. The flatness in this work indicates the limitless power of life. Nowadays, photography and paintings are dubbed ‘flat art’ as an opposite concept to three-dimensional art and the media, but the concept of flatness was originally regarded as a characteristic of painting, not photography.

The flatness of painting, which was subject to in-depth discussion for a long time in western art history, was achieved in the process of tearing down the illusion of representation. Like the destruction of perspective and the advent of all-over painting, the controversy over the flatness of paintings that continued for a while was just a big commotion for a change of thought. In the East, it was an undisputed fact since a long time ago that painting is flat. Painting in a roll of paper that can expand infinitely to the sides was a way of gently corresponding with the infinity of the world. However, the canvas that was fixed in the golden ratio set the center and the periphery and invented ways of expressing the reality through compression such as perspective, scorcio and shading. The window of the world that shows the infinite reality severed the reality arbitrarily. Photography, which received the spotlight for its ability to perfectly represent the world, also complied with the ratio of the canvas. It is because the camera has the most loyal perspective to the vanishing point. Unexpectedly, the form of the perspective and the content that is forced by the form were passed down in a stubborn manner. But, KOO makes an interesting attempt here as well.

In the Beginning is an important series by KOO that makes use of traditional Korean patchworks. They are the photographs of a young male dancer but are far from ordinary portraits. The body featured in the series is that of the anonymous. It is not a body that retains the memories of a particular person, just as a person’s belongings do not remember the name of their owner. In a symmetrical, geometric frame, Robert Mapplethorpe captured a body filled with glamorous vitality that never declines. But what mattered to KOO was the abysmal, weary ‘motions’ of the models. KOO’s sympathy towards the agonizing creatures that are swayed by their destiny made him pay attention to the hopeless motions made by the anonymous body. The photographs were printed on paper that was connected like patchworks, deliberately rejecting a clean finish. Though they maintain the normal ratio of a canvas as much as possible, the disorderly edges made of small pieces imply the potential for expansion. In particular, In the Beginning 10-2 that shows both hands and both feet was based on a ratio that makes four images look as if they are connected indicating the potential to expand vertically. Such a change in the format becomes more drastic when “Silhouette of Mother and Grandmother” is more actively involved in KOO’s work. I mentioned earlier that the installation of the soap pictures reminds me of patchworks. Each picture arouses the sorrowful, plaintive beauty of feeble beings, but when they are displayed together on a wall they allow us to feel a new kind of beauty that is born in the harmony of tiny things. They remind us of the beauty of the patchwork that is born through the cooperation of leftover fabrics. It does not have the structure of power and authority of something that claims itself a center of attention, turning the rest into the periphery. Small fabrics are powerful enough to change their neighbors and create a peaceful world where they have intimate relationships. KOO reads the power that resides in the weakest beings. The size of the patchwork made of leftover fabrics is limitless. It can change from a square to a rectangle and has a system that can proliferate endlessly. What is added does not become a periphery; it just makes an extension.

KOO’s work that matches a white porcelain with a folksy flower painting followed the same ratio of the width of an ordinary folding screen. This means an escape from the visual frame that photography illicitly imposes and a progress into a new frame. As pointed out at the beginning of this writing, it is a moment of “the projection of the contemporary out of the past.” KOO’s recent works take advantage of the perspective of our traditions. For instance, in the case of his photograph of the Mount Huangshan, it gives the impression that we are watching a traditional oriental painting that utilized the conventional principle of three perspectives, unlike most landscape photographs that are focused on the depth of the place. The shape of the photographic paper is also similar to that of a scroll that is vertically long. The camera lens is based on single-point focus and thus in fact can be influenced by perspective than any kind of oil painting can. However, KOO’s camera has abandoned its original nature and has become overwhelmed by the volition of the artist himself, a man who observes and reinterprets the world. It strictly obeys the “Silhouette of Mother and Grandmother” that is inherent in all of us.

Bibliography

Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, Harper Collins Publishers, 2000

Lee Jinsuk, The Story of Russian Art, Minumsa, 2007

Susan Blackmore, The Meme Machine, Oxford Publishing Limited, 1999

Régis Debray, Vie et mort de l’image, 1992

Koo Bohnchang, How to Capture the Touching Moment, Culturegrapher, 2014

Cho Jeonghwan et al., Fluxus Art Revolution, Galmuri, 2011

Kim Bongryul, Kim Bongryul’s Story of Korean Architecture 1, 2 & 3, Dolbegae, 2006

Choi Joonsik, Why Koreans Reject Frames?, Sonamoo, 2002