User:Artshadows/Draft jungjinlee

Jungjin Lee (born 1961) is an Korean contemporary photographer who creates large black and white photographs documenting landscapes, everyday objects as well as people. Lee uses her photographs as a way to create symbolic self-portraits, while also exploring concepts like impermanence, the void, no mind, globalism, landscapes and unseen energy in her work. She is known for her photographs of the American Desert, a subject she has revisited throughout her career. Lee splits her time between New York City and Seoul, South Korea. Lee's work is represented in public collections around the world including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, L.A. County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, The Museum of Photography, Seoul and many other collections. A retrospective of her work was recently exhibited at the Fotomuseum Winterthur Winterthur, Switzerland.

Background
Jungjin Lee was born in Seoul, Korea in 1961. She studied calligraphy in childhood and majored in ceramics at Hong Ik University, graduating with a Bachelor’s of Fine Art in 1984. After graduating Lee worked as a commercial photographer 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 and enrolling in New York University to pursue an MA in photography. While in New York, Lee worked for the iconic photographer Robert Frank whose famous travels across the United States may have influenced Lee’s own decision to take a road trip across the United States. In her travels she encounters 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's photographs these barren landscapes when they are transformed by the tumultuous weather, discarded refuse, decaying structures and by her own photographic process.

Artistic Practice
Wind 04-54

Photographic Process
Lee uses a unique photographic process which she describes, "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." She begins by photographing the subject with a mid-size format panoramic camera. In the development process she prints on a traditional mulberry paper which she hand sensitizes with a brush using liquid light. 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 capable of her digital camera to communicate her emotional state of mind at the time she takes the photograph to the viewer. This process also results in an image that recalls traditional Asian ink painting.

Recognition
Lee's photographic practice is important both within the context of contemporary Korean Photography 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 Jungjin Lee, the effacing the technological capabilities of her camera allow her to explore the symbolic boundaries of the landscape as a genre. Photo scholar and critic Eugenia Parry explore 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 chooses to contrast 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." Photo critic and historian Vicki Goldberg observes that Lee's landscapes represent her own, "introspective states and thoughts." While the majority of Lee's work focuses on the land, in several series she chooses to explore other subject in the series including Pagogas (1998), crumbling Buddha sculptures, Buddhas (2002), every objects, Thing (2003-06) and portraits, Breath (2009-). Jungjin Lee has received several awards recognizing her work as well group and solo exhibitions, commissions as well as numerous publications documenting her work.

Series
A Lonely Cabin in a Far Island (1987-88) Untitled (1989) Desert (1990-94) American Desert I (1990-92) American Desert II (1994) American Desert III, Self Portrait (1993-96) Untitled (1997-99) American Desert IV (1994-95) Pagodas (1998) Ocean (1999) On Road (2000-01) Buddha (2002) Wall (2003-04) Thing (2003-06) Wind (2004-07) Remains (2012-) Breath (2009-) Unnamed Road (2010-12) Everglades (2014-15) Opening (2016-16)

Works in Public Collections
Metropolitan Museum of Art Whitney Museum of American Art L.A. County Museum of Art Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe Norton Museum of Art Akron Art Museum Portland Art Museum J.P. Morgan FNAC National Museum of Contemporary Art, Kwachon, Korea Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul Sonje Museum of Contemporary Art, Kyongju, Korea The Museum of Photography, Seoul Gyeonggido Museum of Art, Ansan Daelim Contemporary Art Museum, Seoul Jordan schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans Kumho Museum of Fine Art, Seoul

Artist Books
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