"Wind" showcases the most recent work of the widely acclaimed and exhibited Korean photographer Jungjin Lee. Known for her laborious and textured photographic process, Lee brushes liquid emulsion onto the surface of handmade rice paper, endowing her images with a uniquely painterly effect. "Wind" captures the ethereal quality of the element in a series of landscapes dominated by windswept expanses and atmospherically foreboding cloud formations--panoramas that reveal an adventurous spirit, yet resist casual entry. Manmade objects, such as a dilapidated school bus or windblown prayer flags, all appear deeply inscribed by an invisible hand that runs through the entire corpus of this volume, leaving evidence of its handiwork on all surfaces. Lee's landscapes are imbued with an elemental vastness that strikes us as atonce powerful and serene.
This is really stunning stuff. Some of these pictures just jumped right out at me. Such a stark, unique perspective. I don't know anything about the complexities behind Jungjin Lee's photographic process, but I know what it felt like to look at these pictures, and it was a good experience. A lot of this collection was shot in the southwest, and this really was a new way of looking at landscapes I sometimes think I'm relatively familiar with. Lee showed me that there are still more ways off seeing the landscape. Very cool.
The only frustration with this collection is that the pictures were all split across two pages. That's a publishing complaint, I know, but it's becoming a big one for me.
The photographs in this book are fantastic. Original, complex, perfectly composed. BUT, the book prints all of them across two pages, losing a huge chunk in the gutter. This book should be reprinted immediately, in wide format, with one photo per page. Aperture should know better.