Jungjin Lee – Echo
In the early 1990s various trips took Jungjin Lee into the endless expanse of America, where she captured archaic, primal images of deserts, rocks, undergrowth, and cactuses. Her fragmentary and poetic series of images have been described by the great Robert Frank as “landscapes without the human beast”. Drawing on her South Korean heritage, the artist developed a highly unique pictorial language in series such as Ocean, On Road, Pagodas, Things, and Wind, in which her fundamental interest in nature and culture is expressed in a space of poetic resonance. In her work, Jungjin Lee taps her profound understanding for materiality, texture, and craftsmanship. Working with Liquid Light, she applies photosensitive emulsion onto rice paper with a coarse brush. The resulting imprecisions in the development process and imperfections in production run counter to photography’s supposed claim to truth. Jungjin Lee’s large-format pictures take on a physical presence that is immediately captivating.
The exhibition is supported by the Volkart Foundation and the Friends’ Association Fotomuseum Winterthur. Additional funding by the Walter Haefner Foundation, Hunziker Betatech AG and the Dr. Georg and Josi Guggenheim Foundation.
An accompanying catalogue will be published by Spector Books, including a short introduction by Thomas Seelig and essays by Lena Fritsch, Hester Keijser and Liz Wells.