Page 105 - artview21 eBook Art Magazine 2023 September issue4

How to See ‘What’: from Space to Place
Sungwoo Kim (Independent curator)

Min Ho Kim’s photographic work seems to reveal what it is referring to, general, in order to convey a specific meaning and immediately evoke
but at the same time, it retreats and blurs repeatedly. His photographs, what it suggests, it may be more effective to include the entire surface
which seem to mainly record particular places, do not address the or all its characteristics, i.e., the façades of the buildings. Nevertheless,
viewer by depending on the symbolic context or value of the place. in Min Ho Kim’s works, the exteriors of the places and structures tend
The object seems to reveal its presence by being located at the center to be dissolved by the accumulation of multiple viewpoints and gazes.
of the picture, yet at the same time, the focus is blurred because it
Recently, he has been working on a series of photographs of the sea
is overlapped with an afterimage of a movement across the place or
under the name Gyeol. They are not images of sea and waves taken
a change in viewpoint. Hence the perspective of the viewer looking
from a single point of view, but a series of images taken while he was
at it moves from the center to a certain atmosphere surrounding the
walking along the coastline, superimposed on one another. The images
object. This is due to the artist’s own methodology. He does not fix
of the calm sea, even the unclear time and locations of shooting,
his viewpoint and observe an object from one specific place. Instead,
suggest a range of things: from personal memories associated with
the artist constantly moves; and in order to acquire one image, he
the sea to the national trauma from the Sewol Ferry Disaster. Even
accumulates and stacks several images recorded from different
the printed paper is not sensitized paper, but ordinary paper, so the
viewpoints. This methodology, as he puts it, makes his photographs
images become more blurred, which helps to maximize the emotion
stand apart from instantaneous lucid images, and converts them into
of the images. The image of a place like this becomes a landscape of
images that are close to ‘silhouettes.’ Min Ho Kim compares his work to
a place floating somewhere prior to something happening as well as a
a kind of drawing. Observing an object, changing the viewpoint several
landscape that is quiet after an event occurred. It is both a symptom of
times, varying the way the object is perceived, focusing on the process
the incident, and has already become part of the incident.
of reproducing the image with such an expanded focus—once one has
seen this, his view of photography as an expanded form of drawing According to Yi-Fu Tuan’s definition, a ‘space’ is a movement, and
is persuasive. His work can be said to be an act of capturing unique an open site of endless possibilities. On the other hand, a ‘place’ is
movements that only the object had before beingfixed as an image, stationary, and the value and meaning given by individuals converge
that is, before being stopped. On the one hand, this can be considered into one spot and end up fixed there. A space is transformed into an
in terms of the unique gaze of an artist who majored in Oriental intimate place by the direct and indirect experience of humans, and the
painting. The multiple viewpoints of Oriental painting and their lack of sense of place that arises at that moment is the sense obtained at the
vanishing point allow the images from different viewpoints to be laid moment of transition from a heterogeneous, unfamiliar, and abstract
equally on one canvas, and the moving viewpoint reveals the observer’s ‘space’ to a concrete ‘place’. In other words, if a space is a floating
movements more emphatically. His work, acquired through this unique point that does not converge into a fixed point, when an individual’s
methodology, is different from the recording-reproducing a single life intervenes and an event occurs there, the space is converted into
flat and clear image by compressing a specific time and space like a place through the individual’s gaze. From this point of view, the
photographs at large. His photographs reveal the imperfection of the place captured by Min Ho Kim, the silhouette of the place captured
instantaneous images in the representation of reality as they distance by the superimposed images, is a ‘place’ filled with shared memories
themselves from the meaning declared by the surface of an object, and emotions about historical events. At the same time, the place is
and his photographs also allow critical thinking on the limitations of a ‘space’ waiting to be re-evaluated by the microscopic perception
the image reproduced by the optical technology of photography. In and interpretation of those who are constantly facing it by deviating
this sense, they are nonphotographic. from the clear surface, as well as an eventful place that is constantly
updated by individuals who confront it.
What is even more interesting is that the more the object he is looking
at deviates from the still image, the more it is distanced from the value In the end, the photographs of Min Ho Kim, created by the crossing of
or symbol of a particular place, the greater the breadth of possibilities the longitudinal trajectory of time represented by the blurred outline
that the silhouette conveys. For example, in Monument_memorial through the accumulation of the photos taken and the transverse
of jewish, a series of photographs capturing Holocaust monuments trace of the movements, can be a new time and space that changes
created to commemorate the Jewish victims during World War II, he according to the interpretation and perception of individuals by
depicts 2,711 gray-grey block structures but does not reproduce them separating the signifier and signified of the place. A ‘space’ becomes
as they are. Rather, only the vanishing points, which are shaken and alive as a ‘place’ by adding our own memories, experiences, knowledge
distracted by the movement of the photographer, only faintly capture and emotions to the landscape that is unfolded before our eyes for the
the outline. This is the same in photos of major places in Gwangju: possibility of interpretation. The image in the photograph becomes a
Monument_ South Jeolla Provincial Office series and Time_ Jeonil space waiting for an event in which the memories of the past and the
Building series. The South Jeolla Provincial Office and Jeonil Building present, myself and others are overlapped and mixed, and becomes a
are the most typical places that symbolize the May 18 Gwangju place full of individual time, free from the concept of linear time. This is
Democratization Movement and are frequently covered in the media the segmented time of individuals, which is multiple times and spaces
in connection with the event. However, it is difficult to grasp the crossing the conceptual boundary between space and place; it is also
historical and symbolic value and significance of the objects by viewing an impulsive image that continuously evokes the tense of ‘present and
the blurry shapes of the buildings without the titles of the works. In now’ by triggering a multifaceted perception of the object.