Beom Choi

When I look at nature, I do not see form first. I photograph trees, vines, stones, guardian posts, and forests, yet what I want to hold is never the name or the outward shape of a thing. I look for the movement that lies beyond the surface — the place a wind has passed, the direction in which a stem has bent, the hour that light has briefly lingered, the moment a living thing coils and unwinds of its own accord. I believe that this unseen energy reveals itself, at a certain instant, as a single line.

To me, a line is not a mere outline. A line is the oldest trace that living things leave upon the world, and at the same time an invisible breath. The curve a vine leaves as it winds, the straight line of a trunk rising from earth to sky, the emptiness that mist clears in the forest, the grain of time carved into the face of a long-standing guardian post — every being carries a line of its own.

In my photographs, nature is not decorative scenery. Nature is a presence that writes itself, erases itself, and stills itself. Before it, I try not to intervene too far. Rather than explaining or embellishing the lines nature has already drawn, I watch and wait for a long while, seeking the moment a line reveals itself most quietly. And so my photographs are closer to silence than to dramatic event, closer to the gradations of black and white than to vivid color.

For me, black-and-white film and darkroom work are not simply technique. They are a way of handling time. Across the slow process of shooting, developing, and printing, the image comes slowly into view. Through this process, I seek to turn the moment of nature not into a mere record but into an image that carries the materiality of time.

There is a sense of the single, unbroken brushstroke in my work. A line once passed cannot be drawn again. The direction in which a vine has wound, the angle at which a branch reaches, the sway the wind has shaped — all pass by like a single breath. I seize that moment, yet never force it into place. The lines within the photograph seem to keep moving even as they hold still. They are the trace of gi-un-saeng-dong, the living rhythm nature carries.

I also hold to the attitude of mu-wi-ja-yeon — of nature left to its own way. I seek not to make but to discover, not to adorn but to wait. Rather than drawing nature into my own intention, I try to accept the order and rhythm nature shows of its own accord. And so my photographs do not assert themselves. They remain, quietly. The longer one looks, the more I hope the breath hidden between line and emptiness reveals itself, slowly.

In Breathing Line, the vine is no longer a part of a plant. It is a brushstroke that life has left in the empty air, a sentence nature has written itself. Winding, unwinding, pausing, and moving on again, the lines become at times a gesture, at times a letter of script, at times the trajectory of an unseen energy. What I sought to see in this work is not the shape of the vine but the direction of the breath that flows within it.

In Tree Series: Lines in Empty Space, the tree becomes a line of another kind. If the vine is a moving line, the tree is a standing one. The straight line of the trunk, the curve of the branches, and the empty ground made of mist and light together form a single sculptural space. Through the tree, I seek to see how nature divides space, empties it, and raises it anew.

In the end, I am not so much photographing nature as photographing the structure of breath it leaves behind. The line in my photographs is not a simple line. It is the direction in which life has passed, the trace where time has lingered, the moment an unseen energy became, for an instant, visible to the eye.

Nature is already writing.I only wait for the moment its line begins to breathe.— Beom Choi