Jungjin Lee

Jungjin Lee (born 1961) is a Korean photographer and artist who currently lives and works in New York City.

Jungjin Lee
Jungjin Lee (2014)
Born
Jungjin Lee[1]

1961 (age 58–59)
South Korea
NationalitySouth Korean
EducationHongik University, New York University
Known forPhotography
AwardsPhotography Award, The Camera Club of New York, Anonymous Was A Woman Award, New York, Dong Gang Photography Award, Yeongwol, Korea

Background

Jungjin Lee was born in Korea in 1961. 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 whose 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 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.[2]

She begins by photographing the subject with a medium-format panoramic camera. She prints on a traditional mulberry paper which she hand sensitizes with a brush using Liquid Light.[3] 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.[4] This process also results in an image that recalls traditional Asian ink painting.[3]

Recognition

Lee's photographic practice is important within the context of contemporary Korean photography,[5] 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".[6]

Photo critic and historian Vicki Goldberg observes that Lee's landscapes represent her own, "introspective states and thoughts."[7] 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 objects, Thing (2003–06) and portraits, Breath (2009–).

Lee has received several awards recognizing her work as well as group and solo exhibitions, commissions as well as numerous publications documenting her work.

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
  • 1989 Camera Club Of New York "A Lonely Cabin In A Far Away Island," New York, USA
  • 1992 Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, OR, USA
  • 1995 PaceMacGill Gallery "Self Portrait," New York, USA
  • 2002 The Museum Of Photography, "Buddha," Seoul, Korea
  • 2003 Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, OR, USA
  • 2008 Goeun Museum Of Photography, “Road To The Wind,” Busan, Korea
  • 2011 Aperture Gallery, “Wind By Jungjinlee,” New York, USA
  • 2013 Andrea Robbi Museum, “Thing,” St.Moritz, Switzerland
  • 2015 Camera Obscura Gallery, “Unnamed Road”, Paris, France
  • 2015 Stephan Witschi Gallery,“Unnamed Road”, Zurich, Switzerland
  • 2015 Howard Greenberg Gallery, “Works From Everglades And Unnamed Road”, New York, USA
  • 2016 Stephan Witschi Gallery, "Everglades", Zurich, Switzerland
  • 2016 Fotomuseum Winterthur, Retrospective "ECHO" Winterthur, Switzerland
  • 2017 Andrew Bae Gallery, "Everglades/Opening", Chicago, USA
  • 2017 Stadtische Galerie Wolfsburg, Retrospective ”ECHO”, Wolfsburg, Germany

Collections

Lee's work is held in the following public collections:

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References
  1. "Union List of Artist Names". www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/ulan/. Retrieved 16 February 2017.
  2. "Interview with Charlotte Cotton". Jungjin Lee. Retrieved 3 April 2017.
  3. Bowie, Chas. "Jungjin Lee: The Stillness of Wind". Untitled. Pacific Northwest College of Art, Feldman Gallery. Retrieved 1 May 2017.
  4. Daniel, Caroline. "The Diary: Caroline Daniel". Financial Times. Retrieved 1 May 2017.
  5. 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.
  6. Parry, Eugenia (2009). Ghost Lands in Wind. New York: Sepia. p. unpaginated.
  7. Goldberg, Vicki (2009). Shorthand Notes for the Spirit in Wind. New York: Sepia. p. unpaginated.
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