‌Results Produced by Interaction of Rationality and Sensitivity

A photographer's action is the one through which he expresses his own interest actively and positively. Therefore, the result of photographing reflects the photographer's life and emotion. So, if anyone can understand a certain specific photographer's work, it means that a chemistry was formed emotionally between him and the photographer.

The action, which a photographer takes, having a high interest in a specific thing or reality, happens only when a consensus - mutual response is produced between him and the object. Accordingly, a highly completed in-depth photograph work is identified with the photographer himself.

Baek Seung Woo took photograph of the inner whole view of the hotel guest room and the trifling articles there. The objects, in which he is interested, are the bed, the pillow, the vase, and other guest room interior trifling articles, including the picture hanging on the guest room wall. The trifling articles and the hotel guest room, of which he took photograph, reflect modernity by themselves, but there is nothing feeling peculiar at all. However, as they are the things in the place where some of the photographer's life was formed, his identity appears from the photographing results.

The photographer well understands the characteristics of camera mechanism and the lens. Based on it, he produced the final results in which his own subjectivity and sensitivity is well shown. His choice of frame and angle is very refined and extremely sensible. By choosing tone adequately and effectively, too, he succeeded in making his works look new and strange. So, his final results feel unrealistic rather than feel like the things in reality, as well.

Even if a thing is a easily visible common one, its new meaning is generated, according to the selection of light and camera-work. The photographer understands it too well and applies it to his photographing. The most basic form of photographing is to stimulate viewers' sensitivity, by giving a new meaning onto a subject for photography. Baek Seung Woo's photographing starts from it. However, his photographs do not stimulate viewers' sensitivity only. The symbolic meaning of the expressive object that the photographer selected and the method of viewing it reflect the contemporary nature. And he shows well that the photograph is not a medium to reproduce a reality as it is.

The works, which Baek Seung Woo displays this time, stimulate both viewers' rationality and sensitivity. Because his works are not the ones, in which only the external shapes of the things were reproduced mechanically, but are the final results that were produced, with rationality and sensitivity mixed in them.

Through the exhibition held this time, the photographer shows a specific cross section of the contemporary culture, along with his own sensitivity. So, viewers will have a new cultural experience this time.

Written by: Kim Young Tae (Planner of Exhibition & Representative of Contemporary Photograph Forum)