HAN Chungshik was a photographer, theorist, and educator who developed a formalist photographic practice grounded in Korean aesthetics and Eastern philosophy at a time when realism was the dominant mode in Korean photography. For him, photography was not only a theoretical object of study but also a way to give visual form to his philosophical reflections. A central aspect of his work was his deep engagement with nature. Nature was not simply a backdrop but the main subject of his images. Through it, he explored reverence, balance, and the relationship between the self and the natural world. For Han, nature did not carry meaning on its own. It found significance only through its relationship with the human.
Han’s Trunk series from the 1970s reflects his exploration of nature through photographic abstraction. In these images, trees take on ambiguous forms. Their surfaces echo human or animal faces, or recall parts of the body. Through abstraction, the tree becomes more than itself. It turns into a vessel for other beings, emotions, or states of mind. Han wrote: “Photographic abstraction can only be achieved by escaping the object. But how can photography, which cannot exist without concrete objects, escape them? When the object is no longer what is perceived first, when the photographer’s presence comes before form, and the image delivers a feeling before a shape, then photography has transcended the object. Abstraction begins when the object slips away from its primary meaning and gives rise to second and third layers of interpretation. It reaches a realm beyond meaning and form.” This merging of body and earth found fuller expression in the Physical Landscape series of the 1980s. Photographed in varied forms, the human foot appears not merely as a body part but as part of the terrain itself. As the title suggests, this is a landscape that is physical in the truest sense. In some images, feet sink into sand or dissolve into water. Of all bodily forms, the foot is the one most grounded in nature. Through the foot, the human touches the earth—and the earth, in turn, responds. In this sense, Physical Landscape is not just a title but a reflection of how body and eart2h are physically bound together. The Koyo: Serenity series, developed over two decades from the 1980s to the 2000s, distills Han’s artistic vision and philosophical inquiry. In these works, he moves beyond form to contemplate the condition of existence itself. As he wrote: “Existence simply is. The silent rock does not stand where it is for a reason. Existence is beautiful—not because it is deemed beautiful, but because it is, in and of itself.” This untethered state of being—quiet, timeless, and without cause—flows into the notion of koyo, or “stillness,” from which the series takes its name. “Existence is still. … ‘Stillness’ is my name. The stillness in Han’s composed frames is not that of an isolated or autonomous entity. It becomes meaningful only in relation to the one who photographs and to those who stand before the image.
