Jehsong BAAK
American, lives and works in Paris
Even when making pictures on his own doorstep, Jehsong Baak is what you might call a traveling photographer. Not that it is unusual for a photographer to travel. For most however it is nothing but a practical means to an even practical end. Photograph architecture? Go out and find buildings. Photograph landscapes? Find a horizon. For the traveling photographer means and end coincide. When traveling, he already is where he wants to be (although usually hard pressed to state his destination precisely). And once arrived, he’s still traveling - mentally if not physically, for every destination is really nothing but a stop on the way. Everything is worth the consideration of the traveling photographers inspective gaze. Everywhere. Anytime. Which probably explains why most of them are unable to discern life and photography. Each exists by the grace of the other. There is a wide variety of traveling photographers (most likely as wide the variety of characters committed to it) but two ‘sub-species’ can be distinguished. There are those who venture into the world to see what is out there and there are those who go out to find what is inside themselves. Jehsong Baak definitely belongs to the latter. If his pictures are descriptive, they are as descriptive of the world as they are of himself. This is what caught my eye, they state. This is what touched me somehow. In this respect each and every one of his pictures is a self-portrait. His doorstep seems to have always been moving. He was born in Junju, South Korea in 1967. He crossed his first ocean at age 9 when immigrating to the United States with his father and his family. Twenty years later he crossed his second ocean, this time on his own and heading for Paris. As usual though, it is the smaller steps that turn out to be the decisive ones. The corners you take without noticing, the side streets that suddenly appear, the bridges you cross without thinking just to find you’ve found something. Or haven’t of course, for surprises come in all sorts. As he knows only too well. Even before moving to the US he got separated from his biological mother. It would take 25 years before he would meet her again -- a moment that would offer him the insight that you can never un-ring a bell. Time cannot be relived, whatever corners you take or bridges you cross. As for his first ocean crossing: imagine waking up in the morning, a stranger in a strange land. Imagine that morning repeating itself, day after day, year after year, in North Carolina, during a stint in Birmingham, Alabama, and ultimately in a suburb of Washington DC where the Baaks finally settled in “a vast landscape of banality and boredom, the mall with a cineplex representing the summit of culture”, as he would later recall. Out of place, out of sync. He picked up photography at age 17 when in high school, figuring working for the school paper was good for meeting people and covering the occasional silly school game, a great way to skip classes. Was it? Years later he rephrased it somewhat: “Some people learn to play the guitar or act in the school play in order to escape, and to experience intensity and magic; mine was taking pictures.” Of course one can take a corner for more reasons than one. (Deep down he had always known the reason to be another one entirely. For years he hadn’t owned a photograph of his mother. Her image had long been a mystery to him.) Once he had bought his first camera he was hooked, spending most of his time in the school’s darkroom. Aged 19 he moved to New York, eager for The Real Thing. He worked as a photographer's assistant for a while, scrounged a few magazine assignments, participated in a group show -- a corner, a side street, a bridge -- just to find that somehow none of it seemed to work out. For seven years he gave up on photography entirely. Later he became convinced that it was the story about the pearls that kept him on track. He learned it from the artist Jon Rush, his drawings professor at the University of Michigan where he had sidetracked himself briefly by thinking he had to study architecture. Rush told him how oysters need salt in order to survive, but that it’s painful when salt comes in contact with their flesh. The suffering oyster produces a fluid to cope with the pain and the fluid and salt mixed together produces a pearl. “Whenever I was drowning in self-pity and sadness, Rush told me to go out there and make my own pearls.” Returning to Korea and tracing his biological mother in 1997 finally cleared his mind. Coming back he had regained his ability to photograph. A few months later he moved to Paris, knowing that becoming a stranger once again would sharpen his senses. He didn’t even speak the language. He found a tiny maid’s room which cost him a small fortune, was mostly broke and got by on odd jobs. Frequently insomniac, he got used to roaming the streets for hours, just taking pictures. Again and again he saw a black and white city, infinitely more intense than it’s grayishly colored daytime counterpart. Slowly a vision emerged: dark, never for its own sake but as backdrop for the light that was always there: tender, guiding, hopeful, comforting. Part of this same vision was his constant use of reflections and shadows: mysterious layers indicating other lives and possibilities, corners to be taken and bridges to be crossed. Be they taken in Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Chicago, Seoul, Philadelphia, Washington, Toulouse, Barcelona, Marseille, Los Angeles, Groningen or Amsterdam - they’re always made on his doorstep, close to his heart.
Eddie Marsman
Groningen, Holland July 2008
Eddie Marsman is a photography critic, writer and curator. In 2001 he curated Jehsong Baak's first ever solo exhibition which took place in a medieval chuch in the vicinity of Groningen as part of the Noorderlicht Photofestival. In 2005 he co-curated a commission on Schiermonnikoog, the smallest inhabited Dutch Wadden Sea island, in which Baak was one of the participants.
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“Nothing is more abstract than reality.” – Giorgio Morandi (Italian, 1890-1964)
Jehsong Baak, a Voyager in Exile
Written by Minny Lee
Daylight magazine, New York 2009
The Jehsong Baak: Là ou Ailleurs (“Here or Elsewhere”) exhibition at the Rick Wester Fine Art gallery features twenty four gelatin silver prints, all of which were printed by Baak in a Paris darkroom. This is a must see exhibit since the opportunity to view moving and dramatic gelatin silver prints in galleries and museums is a fading rarity throughout the world. Baak utilizes two sizes (16”x20” and 20”x24”) which allow the many details in his works to surface.
Jehsong Baak (b.1967) freely acknowledges that Robert Frank (b.1924) and Joself Koudelka (b.1938) have served as inspirational mentors in his work. The parallels in the lives of these three photographers are striking and so too basic themes of their work. Yet Baak maintains his own visual language and context that is complex and poignant, creating a personal path so that his photographs serve as confessions of and insights into his persona and life.
The continuity of Baak’s photographs and his aesthetic impact are best described as Caravaggesque chiaroscuro. The eerie and surreal image prints are of high contrast and a grainy black and white, a result of photographing at night in stark and desolate places. The subjects in these photographs are friends, intimates, and subjects encountered in daily life. Whether the figure is a man or woman, boy or girl, Baak’s photographs evoke the feeling of a self-portrait, irrespective of the difference in subject, time or locale.
Baak’s photographs break the stereotype and generalization that photography is a reflection of reality. Baak’s photographs reflect his past and present, memories and emotions as if he is on an endless voyage and his photography is a way to trace his path. While many contemporary photographers are engrossed with or attempt to capture too many thoughts and ideas instead of seeing and feeling what subjects are actually at their disposal, it is refreshing to marvel at Baak’s ability to be intuitive and spontaneous.
The exhibition begins with an abstract image called Wet Triangle in Phone Booth, Paris, 2000. Without knowledge of the title from the image lists, it is hard to figure out anything about the photograph. Geometrical and reflective focused and unfocused forms and shapes are layered into the space. A triangle panel supports wet debris with an array of gray tonalities submerging into the darkness. Where are we and what exactly are we looking at? Baak takes these tangible forms of reality and transforms them into abstract forms and shapes in his photographs. Once embraced and embodied in the photograph, they no longer are part of a reality. We have entered and been enticed into Baak’s surreal world.
Sadness and mystery are two words that came to mind after seeing Baak’s photographs. Here sadness is what Philip Perkis refers to in his book as “The Sadness of Men,” “one that embraces life and suggests a possibility of transcendence” that is positive resonance.
Whether Baak is in Paris, Rome, or New York, he translates the outer world into his inner world, thus creating photographs of his own. His photographs are fragments of his past like an incomplete puzzle. At the end, nobody knows how to put all the pieces together except Baak himself. Like Diane Aubus said, "A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.”
Born in Junju, South Korea, Baak immigrated to the US at the age of nine in 1977. Growing up in a Korean household where traditional Confucianism values permeated, it is no surprise that Baak, himself, evinced modesty and restraint. In his junior year in high school, Baak bought his first camera and quickly became obsessed with photography. For Baak, photography enabled him to escape to some place more magical. When taking pictures, Baak tries not to apply any theories or strategies and to let go of his conscious mind.
One of the single most important events that made Baak the photographer he is today was separation from his mother at the age of four. He finally met her again 26 years later in Korea in 1997. The absence of maternal love and support while growing up created a longing for and almost mythical curiosity in things maternal as is evident in Baak’s photographs. Women are almost faceless and unapproachable in Baak’s photographs by blurring, out-of-focus, reflection, etc.
In Woman Pressed against Glass, Paris, 2003, a woman is on the other side of glass, thus making her untouchable. In Reflection of a Woman, Paris 1999, a woman’s face appears in a building reflection as if it is a face mask. Vertical and diagonal lines go through her face. She is there somewhere but we cannot decipher clearly. In Woman Lying on Pavement, Paris 2003, the pattern of a woman’s dress tinges the pavement making it seem that her body is being submerged into the pavement. Her arms are raised and her eyes look away, as the street lights illuminate part of her face and arms. She looks lost in space and time.
Baak studied architecture at the University of Michigan where he met his life long mentor and friend, Jon Rush. Rush was Baak’s drawing teacher. Baak’s respect and gratitude towards Rush continues to this day and he dedicated his book “Là ou Ailleurs” to Rush. Baak says, “During my 20s, when I was completely lost and confused, often discouraged and tormented, Jon was the one person who stood faithfully by my side and kept encouraging me to continue.” Baak regards Rush as teacher of life rather than an academic teacher.
From age 22 to 29, Baak stopped taking pictures. Baak refers to this period in his life as “hibernation,” Baak reminded himself of Jon Rush’s story about oysters bearing pearls. Baak told the story in an interview with Shots Magazine (Shots 99, spring 2008): “He said that oysters need salt in order to survive, but that it’s painful when salt comes in contact with their flesh. The suffering oyster produces a fluid to cope with the pain and the fluid and salt mixed together produces a pearl. He told me to go out there and make my own pearls.”
During this time, Baak also watched Federico Fellini (1920-1993)’s 8 ½ (1963) many times. He regards 8 ½ as an inspiration in his photography. The influence of films on Baak’s photography is striking. Any one of Baak’s photograph can be seen as a movie frame. Drama and fantasy, stark and dreamy backgrounds, dramatic lighting, isolated subjects lit in darkness, desolate cityscapes, and character in their own state of mind can all be attributed to this.
Baak made a dramatic decision in 1998, moving to Paris from the US to pursue life as a photographer. He became a foreigner again. Since then, he has been an oyster bearing pearls, painfully cultivating himself as a photographer. He often wandered around Paris at night and photographed different layers of the city. Film noir-like low-key lighting is Baak’s favourite. When Baak faces harsh day light, instead of avoiding glares, he points his camera right at the sun. Baak says, “I like difficult situations, for I have this belief that miracles are more likely to happen in difficult rather than easy situations.”
Talking about his influences, Baak says, “Robert Frank and Josef Koudelka’s works had the greatest influence in my evolution as a photographer. Frank’s uncompromising, naked, often brutal, exploration of his interior life, and Koudelka’s formalistic poetry and elegance in his expressions of rootlessness were important references for my own development.”
Baak’s exile to foreign land is similar to that of Frank and Koudelka’s. Swiss-born Robert Frank immigrated into the U.S.A. in 1947 then lived in New York and Nova Scotia, Canada. Czech born Josef Koudelka left his country in exile in 1970 and lived in England and then became a citizen of France in 1987. He finally was able to visit Czechoslovakia in 1990 after 20 years, just like Baak visited Korea 20 years later since he left.
Coincidently, the person who recognized the pearls in Baak’s photographs was Robert Delpire, the very person who edited and published Robert Frank’s “The Americans” (1958) and Josef Koudelka’s “Gypsies” (1975). These two books had a profound impact on Baak. After failing to catch the fancy or understanding of three other publishers, Baak showed his dummy book to Delpire. Baak’s “Là ou Ailleurs” (2006) was published with Delpire’s editing and design. Baak recalls this event as the most important event in his photographic career so far. The photographs exhibited at Rick Wester Fine Art were selected by Delpire and finalized by Wester.
The title “Là ou Ailleurs” (“Here or Elsewhere”) was devised by Delpire after finishing with the layouts. Delpire described Baak’s photographs as “not bound to a specific location but rather to an emotion” and said “his pictures come from a place he calls his own.” The figures in Baak’s photographs are elsewhere through reflections and transparencies. They are here and elsewhere simultaneously.
While Delpire and Baak were preparing for an exhibition at Philips de Pury in Paris, coinciding with the launching of the book, Rick Wester had a chance to see Baak’s photographs. Wester is a veteran in the photography industry with 30+ years of experience from galleries to auction houses. Wester became a private dealer and also engages in appraisals and private consulting. In 2007, Wester launched Rick Wester Fine Art (RWFA). Jehsong Baak: Là ou Ailleurs is the second photography project shown at RWFA and it is Baak’s first solo exhibition in the U.S.A. RWFA changes venues for each exhibition. Associate Director Sarah Stout interprets this kind of nomadic strategy as a flexible business model that gives freedom to explore different locations and not to be tied-down to one location.
The exhibition at RWFA ends with Dog on the Beach, Holland 2005. The image is strange and beautiful. A dog is looking back at the sea where there are cumuli in the sky as white as the dog’s hair. More than half of the frame is covered by a V-shaped dark vignette that surrounds the dog to create the illusion for the viewer of looking though a key hole. The dog’s legs are facing forward as if at any second, it will turn back and walk forward. This is a perfect photograph to end the exhibition. It evokes hope and despair that are like two sides of a coin. The ambiguity of the image creates mystery for the viewer and only Baak knows the secret revelations and cathartic release of emotions in this all his other photographs.
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