photographer
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Therefore, the mind is moved, and that by the mind.
GOING HOME
All roads exist to return, and all images exist to disappear. Returning and disappearing are irreversible. But they are just a temporary absence, not a permanent one like nonexistence. What used to stay in this world has been completely extinct or totally nonexistent, which can’t be said. That means, the world things only return to their original places-homecoming.
Photographs have the original image of homecoming, which is the shadow as the spitting image of someone or something, the right person or the right thing that resembles an object, not an object itself. And it cannot expose itself. That is, it just exist as the shape of time-the gure of absence. Photos always exist just in front of the lost time. The concepts of the time that photos cherish-receding, disappearing, or leaving-are the shape of homecoming, death. Look! The image of absence or existence in photos can be proved by an Oriental or Occidental funeral procession carrying a owery bier with a dead person inside it in that the dead person’s portrait goes rst. And then the portrait returns home for enshrinement, after the whole funeral with the procedures of burying or burning his or her things. What’s the reason? Because of photos’ feature of homecoming. Photos are the time that keeps returning and the body that keeps revolving.
Photo artist Jung Sungtae’s photos prove time’s or existences’ homecoming. That was expressed by the original sensitivity of homecoming that his photos show. Graceful and leisurely. Nature is the protoplasm of homecoming, so its essence keeps revolving all the time. Heavens, ground, or water is the origin of homecoming, and like nature humans have the origin of homecoming, so they revolve between the cradle and the tomb. Jung’s photos are the space for such homecoming expressed through human beings, especially women with a place of creation, the womb. The places, time, gazes, and directions as the background elements of his photos, whether they are juxtaposed or combined, always return to where they came from, set to where they rose from, or ow back to where they ew out from. These elements are all for homecoming or naturalization.
The order of beauty lies in homecoming. Objects placed in juxtaposition of universe and nature, heavens and woods, or humans and things are posed last and beautifully for homecoming to their original places or locations. His photos have the pure and artistic sensitivity of natural homecoming like this, but they show it secretly and quietly. Something not big or loud means beauty, so a little sky, woods, or person are charming. And we miss them. So what we miss means little things. Little things return home. Whatever gets farther, smaller, or fading is a little thing. Finally, they have come into our mind.
Jung Sungtae’s photos express the shape of homecoming with the calm tones of black and white or with the nice and ripe tones of various colors. His black and white photos contain the image of super mental and spiritual ‘Absence’, and his neat and little ones have the image of super sensual and materialistic ‘Absence’. The balanced sense of beauty. Their withdrawal seems great-not too extreme. The nature of a thing doesn’t have a splendid appearance, and the true phase of a thing has its inside power of withdrawal. Such is a photo. The sense of penetrating into this inside is photos’ power, and their true nature is just hiding, even though they come out with outward phenomena as a medium.
Photographer Jung’s “Homecoming” can be a big theme, but he has tried to make his photos contain the “Vitality” of a truth. That is, what has made him great is his attitude of mind-he struggles to observe the true birth and disappearance of things. Finding means seeing. Beautiful are his eye struggling to nd disappearance against so many common looks and his mind trying hard to nd the idea of universal homecoming that all shapes end up disappearing to return home. Therefore, the mind is moved, and that by the mind.
Jin Dongsun Photo Critic, Professor