Jungjin Lee: Unnamed Road

Every now and then I'm revisiting some of the photography books and other items on my shelves here. This time it’s . . .

I was looking forward to writing about Unnamed Road, a true favourite in my collection, but sitting here with the book in front of me I realise it won’t be easy. The problem is that Jungjin Lee’s images tend to get right inside of me. They are dark, poetic and tactile, and they evoke a sensation that I can feel almost physically. I’m going to struggle to describe her pictures in words.. or reduce them to words. Sometimes it’s enough to feel and not to think. 

Jungjin Lee is a Korean photographer living in the United States. She has developed a unique style over the years, printing on hand-made Korean paper brushed with light sensitive emulsion. The print is then scanned and worked again in Photoshop to arrive at the final image - beautifully suggestive, grainy and organic.

These are photographs which reference their own physicality, their own surface. I remember Stephen Shore once talking about the transparency of a photograph: how, when looking at a black and white image the viewer is stopped by its surface, whereas a colour image is inherently more transparent, more ‘real’. Jungjin Lee takes this further, creating a photographic surface that lies between the subject and the viewer, not so much a barrier as a veil. It reminds us that we are looking at a photograph of a landscape: a representation on a piece of paper. This is something I also came across in the work of Danish photographer, Adam Jeppesen (I previously reviewed his book 'Wake' here). Like Jungjn Lee he has played with the photographic surface in his work, for example his Flatland Camp Project. Also like Lee, he embraces the potential beauty that comes from irregularities and imperfections. 

Unnamed Road was first published by Mack in 2013 (good luck finding that one) and then by Nazreli Press in 2023 which is the edition I have. The photographs were made in Israel and Palestine and in particular around the West Bank. Lee was one of twelve photographers (including Stephen Shore) invited to make work in the region as part an art project called ‘This Place’. She admits to feeling uncomfortable there, overwhelmed by what was around her in a land whose history and conflict were not her own.  As she says in the book, “I found myself trying to make photographs in a place I didn’t want to be. It was difficult, but looking back, I can see it forced me to change as an artist and I'm grateful for that."

The images describe a landscape for the most part devoid of people, as in much of her work. She draws lines and shapes as if sketching with a pencil: the edges of land demarcated by shades of rock and sky and shadow. There is little reference to politics or conflict, her aim was to observe the landscape “as the olive tree sees it”. What comes across is a place that is both solid and fragile, eternal and precarious. She plays with mass and weight and negative space. There are so many strong images in the book, and placed together they read like a silent poem.

I’m really drawn to Lee’s work. I find it compelling and disturbing and I think my own series ‘This Last of Meeting Places’ was certainly influenced by her. When I came across Jungjin Lee's ‘Wind’ in 2009 I remember viewing it almost as a piece of music; the notes scribbled across each horizon in lines sometimes jagged sometimes flowing between one image and the next. Quite beautiful.

Getting back to Unnamed Road.... well I won't say any more. Just look at the photographs - preferably in the book itself as they are not done justice on the screen.

Jungjin Lee, Unnamed Road. Published by Nazreli Press, 2023