Exposed Photography: Being/Existing in the Flow of Photography and History
Yuki Konno
The photo is exposed—the term "exposed" in photography might seem like a tautology. What appears on paper—a photograph—is a visible record of something that already existed, now made present once again. Exposure is a fundamental aspect of photography; it allows a scene, object, or subject to reveal itself naturally. Exposed photographs emerge as artifacts of what was already there, rather than actively revealing something. However, this doesn't imply a lack of direction. Instead, these images reflect the viewer’s eyes. Exposed photographs result from deliberate, mechanical, accidental, or spontaneous efforts to capture a moment. Between certainty and doubt, or rather traversing both, photography exposes something with an attitude that is unstable yet directed toward somewhere.
Here is the subject exposed to our eyes. What we fail to see, what we wish to preserve rather than being satisfied with just seeing, and what will soon be gone—all contribute to a gradual shift in our perception. By recording and presenting something as it is, photography captures all of time in the past tense. The photograph, representing the here and now, becomes a negative print of the future, or more precisely an "unstable future." This predetermined future has a different, medium-specific breath compared to painting, where the object is seen “anew” as paint accumulates on the canvas. In photography, future exposure is linked to the medium's inherent property of documenting a specific time and place, and this process inevitably involves decay. Always recorded as something of a specific time, a photograph can be captured on a sheet of paper, through a mechanical device that degrades when submerged in water, or as a digital file. Despite these constraints of material limitations and variability, photographs often carry significant weight—a historical scene, a person's life, or evidence of an event. This face looks at the viewer. Exposed, the photograph enters someone's field of vision and is captured by the gaze. It is then subjected to interpretation, the passage of time, and potential natural disasters.
In Kang's work, exposed photography manifests in two distinct ways. The first is a literal technical process. The artist takes photographs printed on paper to the mudflats, where they are either left directly on the ground or secured in a net and retrieved after a few days. Exposed to natural elements such as waves and sunlight, the photographs accumulate a thin layer of sand, which leaves behind furrows and ridges. Occasionally, traces of human touch or man-made objects, such as nets, are also visible. In these exposed photographs, the artificial and the natural intermingle. The second aspect involves a place called Seomdolmoru, which the artist discovered by chance through an internet blog. The photographs—taken with a digital camera—were left by someone who visited the place where a resort development was initiated and subsequently abandoned during the Chun Doo-hwan regime. These images serve as a record of both the place and the photographs moving toward a time of decline. The artist also visited and photographed the site. However, as a result, the images in this exhibition end up diluting both metaphorically and materially, rather than adding depth to the narrative or history of the place, or even to the anecdotes of the blog owner and the artist.
In photography, exposure is shaped by the medium's characteristics about the discovery and transformation of the subject. Kang's photographs are not merely a result of uncovering the history of the place, Seomdolmoru. The images connected to this place appear worn and faded as a result of their exposure. These images have escaped from the island, the era, and traditional representation. Yet, they are not entirely detached or "escaped" but instead are integrated into the flow. Exposed photographs immerse themselves in this flow. Like the anecdotes that circulate about a place, they gradually become abstracted from mere documentation and records. However, they do not record nothingness. The photographs, saturated with sunlight and seawater, and marked with sand and ripples, also document the history and process of photography as a representational technique. Kang’s work encompasses the image of the landscape captured by sunlight in the camera obscura, the subject left on paper soaked in the developer in the darkroom, and the image composed of grainy pixels on the Internet. The peeling grains of sand also reflect the flow of photographic history.
If you examine the works, you'll notice that some are partially flaked off. This occurs where the sand is less uplifted and the force of the waves is stronger. The exposed photographs are not only records of erosion but also of deposition. As the waves pass, sunlight fades the photographs, and as the sand dries, it sticks and peels away. The resulting photographs capture the temporal and material flow of these two forces: deposition and erosion. To record this flow is to be within it. This flow is not aimed at complete disappearance or entirely new creation. Instead, the sand on the paper creates an image—a record—while the photographs evoke the past in the sunlight. The partially broken image undergoes a process similar to shedding in reptiles—not a complete transformation, but what remains despite it is in photography. (Shedding is based on repetition, not dramatic transformation.) By transforming through the process of working with both the medium of photography and its history, Kang’s photographic work reveals itself through exposure. Consequently—no, provisionally—exposed photography demonstrates a process of development within decline.
(translated by Malpigg)