Jungjin Lee
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Jungjin Lee | |
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![]() Jungjin Lee (2014) | |
Born | Jungjin Lee[1] 1961 (age 62–63) |
Nationality | South Korean |
Education | Hongik University, New York University |
Known for | Photography |
Awards | Photography Award, The Camera Club of New York, Anonymous Was A Woman Award, New York, Dong Gang Photography Award, Yeongwol, Korea |
Jungjin Lee (born 1961) is a Korean photographer and artist who currently lives and works in New York City.
Background
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Jungjin Lee was born in Korea in 1961.[2] She studied calligraphy in childhood and majored in ceramics at Hongik University, graduating with a Bachelor's of Fine Art in 1984. After graduating Lee worked as a photo journalist and later as a freelance photographer.
In 1987, she immersed herself for one year in a project focused on documenting the life of an old man who made his living hunting for wild ginseng. This experience motivated Lee to become a photographer and expand her technical knowledge of photography by traveling to New York City and enrolling in New York University to pursue an MA in photography.
While in New York City, Lee worked for the photographer Robert Frank. Later, she took a road trip across the United States. In her travels she encountered the American Desert, a landscape that she is deeply moved by and which becomes the subject of several of her photographic series, including Desert (1990–94), American Desert I–IV (1990–1996), On Road (2000–01), Wind (2004–07) and Remains (2012–). Lee photographs these barren landscapes when they are transformed by the tumultuous weather, discarded refuse, decaying structures and by her own photographic process.
Lee's Unnamed Road (2010-12) was part of This Place.
Photographic process
Lee uses a unique photographic process:
For my work, the darkroom process is just as important as the digital process. Throughout the process, I focus on transmitting on my prints the feelings that I felt as the time of taking the photograph. I try to deliver the essence of what I truly want to express.[3]
She begins by photographing the subject with a medium-format panoramic camera.[citation needed] She prints on a traditional mulberry paper which she hand sensitizes with a brush using Liquid Light.[4] This print is then scanned and Lee further manipulates the image in Photoshop. The resulting image is a high contrast black and white print, in which the indexical brush marks are still visible. Lee effaces the technological capability of her digital camera to communicate her emotional state of mind at the time she takes the photograph to the viewer.[5] This process also results in an image that recalls traditional Asian ink painting.[4]
Recognition
Lee's photographic practice is important within the context of contemporary Korean photography,[6] but also more broadly she is part of a contemporary photographic movement of photographers pushing the physical boundaries of photography as a medium to expose and communicate the essence of a subject. For Lee, effacing the technological capabilities of her camera allows her to explore the symbolic boundaries of landscape as a genre.
Photo scholar and critic Eugenia Parry explores Lee's series through the lens of Buddhist spirituality in the essay that accompanies Lee's photobook Wind. Parry observes that in Lee's photographs she contrasts discarded props of human life with the land, symbolically acting as her on Buddhist teacher, asking viewers to "view ordinary things, love change, tolerate absolute incomprehensibility. Contemplate the temporal, recognize the celestial".[7]
Photo critic and historian Vicki Goldberg observes that Lee's landscapes represent her own, "introspective states and thoughts."[8] While the majority of Lee's work focuses on the land; in several series she explores other subjects in the series including Pagodas (1998); crumbling Buddhist sculptures, Buddhas (2002); every[dubious ] objects, Thing (2003–06) and portraits, Breath (2009–).
Publications
- Lee, Jungjin (1988). Lonely Cabin in a Far Away Island. Seoul: Yeolwha-Dang Art Publications.
- Lee, Jungjin (1993). Jungjin Lee: The American Deserts. Seoul: Shigak Publications.
- Lee, Jungjin (1997). Wasteland. Seoul: Art Space Seoul.
- Lee, Jungjin (2000). Jungjin Lee: Beyond Photography. Seoul: Shigak Publications.
- Lee, Jungjin (2001). On Road/Ocean. Seoul: Kukje Gallery.
- Lee, Jungjin (2002). Desert. New York: Jungjin Lee and Sepia International.
- Lee, Jungjin (2005). Thing. Seoul: Minseogak Publications.
- Lee, Jungjin (2006). Jungjin Lee. Seoul: Yeolwha-Dang Art Publications.
- Lee, Jungjin (2009). Wind. New York: Aperture Foundation/Sepia International.
- Lee, Jungjin (2014). Unnamed Road. London: Mack Publications.
- Lee, Jungjin (2016). Everglades. Paso Robles, USA: Nazraeli Press.
- Lee, Jungjin (2016). Echo. Germany: Fotomuseum Winterthur, Spector Book.
Solo exhibitions
![]() | This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources. (October 2018) |
- A Lonely Cabin In A Far Away Island, The Camera Club of New York, New York City, 1989
- Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, OR, USA, 1992
- Self Portrait, PaceMacGill Gallery, New York City, 1995
- Buddha, Museum of Photography, Seoul, Korea, 2002
- Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, OR, USA, 2003
- Road To The Wind, Goeun Museum Of Photography, Busan, Korea, 2008
- Wind By Jungjinlee, Aperture Gallery, New York City, 2011
- Thing, Andrea Robbi Museum, St.Moritz, Switzerland, 2013
- Unnamed Road, Camera Obscura Gallery, Paris, 2015; Stephan Witschi Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland, 2015
- Works From Everglades And Unnamed Road, Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York City, 2015
- Everglades, Stephan Witschi Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland, 2016
- ECHO, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland, 2016; Stadtische Galerie Wolfsburg , Wolfsburg, Germany, 2017. A retrospective.
- Andrew Bae Gallery, Everglades/Opening, Chicago, USA, 2017
Collections
Lee's work is held in the following public collections:
- Metropolitan Museum of Art: 9 prints (as of 27 December 2021)[9]
- Whitney Museum of American Art: 1 print (as of 27 December 2021)[10]
- Museum of Photography, Seoul[11]
References
- ^ "Union List of Artist Names". www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/ulan/. Retrieved 16 February 2017.
- ^ "Jungjin Lee - Artists - Howard Greenberg Gallery". www.howardgreenberg.com. Retrieved 2021-03-29.
- ^ "Interview with Charlotte Cotton". Jungjin Lee. Retrieved 3 April 2017.
- ^ a b Bowie, Chas. "Jungjin Lee: The Stillness of Wind". Untitled. Pacific Northwest College of Art, Feldman Gallery. Retrieved 1 May 2017.
- ^ Daniel, Caroline. "The Diary: Caroline Daniel". Financial Times. Retrieved 1 May 2017.
- ^ Sinsheimer, Karen, Tucker, Anne (2009). Chaotic Harmony: Contemporary Korean Photography. New Haven: New Haven: Yale University Press: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. p. 158. ISBN 9780300157536.
- ^ Parry, Eugenia (2009). Ghost Lands in Wind. New York: Sepia. p. unpaginated.
- ^ Goldberg, Vicki (2009). Shorthand Notes for the Spirit in Wind. New York: Sepia. p. unpaginated.
- ^ "Search the Collection". www.metmuseum.org. Retrieved 2021-12-27.
- ^ "Jungjin Lee". whitney.org. Retrieved 2021-12-27.
- ^ "The Museum of Photography, Seoul". photomuseum.or.kr. Retrieved 2021-12-27.
External links
- Official website
- Echo, Städtische Gallery
- Echo, Fotomuseum Winterthur, YouTube
- This Place: Jungjin Lee, Unnamed Road
- This Place: An Interview with Jungjin Lee, Paper Journal
- This Place: Jungjin Lee, Unnamed Road, YouTube
- Articles with short description
- BLP articles lacking sources from May 2017
- All BLP articles lacking sources
- Articles with hCards
- BLP articles lacking sources from October 2018
- All articles with unsourced statements
- Articles with unsourced statements from October 2018
- All accuracy disputes
- Articles with disputed statements from October 2018
- Official website not in Wikidata
- AC with 0 elements
- 1961 births
- Living people
- South Korean photographers
- South Korean women photographers