Naksan #2293, 2005

Hong Kong 2015
Naksan #2293

Hakgojae Gallery

Photography
Pigment Print
160.0 x 110.0 (厘米)
63.0 x 43.3 (吋)
The winter sea that Boomoon photographed was so stormy it could just as well be called a sea of snow. The snow is constantly, imperceptibly, burying and sinking the landscape in a uniform whiteness. But the accumulating snow does not simply cover and hide the landscape, it strips away the cover of existing meaning that envelops the figure of nature. At times the windblown snow violently agitates the scene, but this agitation can also be seen have the same endpoint. The snow is making the landscape new. Thus, these photographs are therapy to restore the previously lost light that inhabits all things. The purpose of the snow and the surf is to bring about restoration. The snow and the waves are both white. The reason this seascape-snowscape suggests a scene of death is that a state of suspended animation is created temporarily to conduct therapy on the landscape. The Naksan series is a place to encounter what Dogen calls “the Light of the self,” they are photographs that corroborate this. I, in m nakedness, am simply looking, without any implications/with all implications, to wager on the continuation of life that connects the days, to obtain resolve. There is no one to help me. The only help appears as light. Looking at these photographs, I can’t but think that I have been given a place to completely immerse myself in a landscape, whether with heedless abandon or casual absorption. As if I am being guided by the dim but stormy white. (written by Shino KURAISHI)