Dae Soo Kim has turned bamboo, which the Far East considers one of the four plants celebrated by the scholars, into an object (*). As the Chinese character ‘竹’ for bamboo illustrates, the straightness of bamboo symbolizes the uprightness of man. When the photographer’s attention is focused on the characteristic image of bamboo and its leaves, he captures the very substance of the Far Eastern spirit. Through his photographic skills, a part of the quintessential spirit of the Far East has been expressed visually. Dae Soo Kim uses the technical possibilities of photography for the visual representation of the spirit of the Far East. He shows us the image in negative and, in doing so, reverses our view of the world. The inverted pictures refer to the interaction between Yin and Yang, and thus present the metaphysics of the Far East in an abstract, i.e. geometric way. Furthermore, the construction of the image and the gradation from black to white, which intersect the long line of the trunk and the short line of the node, show us the teaching of Yin and Yang and the subtle aesthetic perception of the Far East. In her bamboo pictures, Dae Soo Kim introduces us to the anthropological significance of bamboo and the Far Eastern vision of Nature. In these countries, bamboo is not simply an object for man, but a subject that can have exchanges with man. Kim’s photos of bamboo should not be interpreted and evaluated from the point of view of the West, but from the point of view of the Far East. In his book “Orientalism, the East created by the West”, E. Said wrote that Eastern culture should not be interpreted or evaluated according to Western standards, because the East is for itself an East; it is therefore reasonable, if one wants to appreciate Kim’s bamboo photos at their true value, to take into account that, in the culture of the Far East, bamboo has an ethical dimension.
1955 Born in Seoul, South Korea
10 rue des jardins, 57000 Metz, France
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