Datz Museum Artist Residency, South Korea

At Datz Museum of Art, I asked the all-women-team there who run the residency, museum and press to select books by or featuring their heroines. I made photograms with the old darkroom papers they had on hand and the books they brought me. Each image was titled with the book (or one of the books) that made the photogram. The 10 images in this series were made with the light of the sun in July on the residency grounds, a bucolic mountainside.

These photographs are sun-prints made with traditional black & white darkroom papers. “Lumen Notebook” is rooted in the question, "What is a photograph?" This work makes a practice of marking time in and with nature. The temporal, unfixed prints are scanned, making use of older analog and newer digital photographic processes together.

No Title Required was printed and exhibited at Datz Museum in South Korea as a scroll, in conjunction with their 10th anniversary, October-November, 2019.

The old and expired photo papers used for this project are from the black & white darkroom at Datz Museum. The black & white silver gelatin photo papers sourced for this project are:

Elieid/Ilford MGRC deluxe IV, Ilfobrom Gallerie FB 1G 35k, MG FB IV Gloss MG TK, Adorama FB, Adorama Gloss RC, Ilfobrom Gallerie 1k FB, Elieid Elisped Matt 3.2M, Forte Elegance poly warmtone, Ilford cool tone, Ilford warmtone, MG, IV deluxe pearl RC, Ilfospeed deluxe gloss, Hanhnemuhle fine art 300, Ilford MG FB Classic.

No Title Required

It has come to this: I’m sitting under a tree
beside a river
on a sunny morning.
It’s an insignificant event
And won’t go down in history.
It’s not battles and pacts,
where motives are scrutinized,
or noteworthy tyrannicides.
And yet I’m sitting by this river, that’s a fact.[…]
The tapestry of circumstance is intricate and dense.
Ants stitching in the grass.
The grass sewn into the ground.
The pattern of a wave being needled by a twig.
So it happens that I am and look.
Above me a white butterfly is fluttering through the air
on wings that are its alone,
and a shadow skims through my hands
that is not other than itself, no one else’s but it’s own.
When I see such things, I’m no longer sure
that what’s important
is more important than what’s not.

- Wislawa Szymborska

This poem excerpt is from the book, “View With a Grain of Sand,” It was selected by Datz Museum director, Sangyon Joo.

Titles/Images: Sangyon - Gravity and Grace; Juyoung - A Friend is a Soul in 5 Bodies; Young Hea - Diary; Jay - Student A; MinYoung - Stealing Away Song; Songa - Tastes Like Literature; MinJung - Eyes I do Have; Hyemi - The Word of Love; Sorang - My Mother’s Story; Jinhee - Everything of Women’s Life