The Korean Wave 2006 - Korean Cultural Service

The New York Times, wednesday, July 12, 2006
e1&5
when real time
turns out to be
the most surreal
of all
By holland cotter
Every day, hundreds of tourists snap photographs of
a crowd-and car-jammed Times Square. The average
picture takes – what? – 15 seconds to shoot?
The same picture of the same place takes the Korean photographer
Atta Kim eight hours. And his Times Square
ends up with only an eerie trace of a human presence,
like a deserted movie set.
Other pictures by Mr. Kim, who is making an outstanding
New York solo debut in a show titled “Atta Kim: On-Air”
at the International Center of Photography, have required
less time. A photograph of a soccer game: two hours. Of
a couple having sex: one hour. Still others go way beyond
the eight-hour mark. “Monologue of Ice,” with its mysterious
lozenge of pollen-yellow light hovering in the dark,
is the product of a marathon 25-hour shoot.
And what is that picture of? A block of ice melting. Mr.
Kim put the ice in a room and left the lens of his camera
open to record the process of physical change as a solid
form returned to fluid. Naturally, the transformation was
slow. But who would have guessed that it would be so
spectacularly photogenic – molten-looking and radiant?
Many of the large-format photographs in Mr. Kim’s show
were made over time. His is an art of duration and of simultaneity.
When he leaves his lens open for an hour on
a couple making love, every movement made in that hour
is in the picture, though condensed into an explosive
blur. His view of Times Square leaves all the stationary elements
– buildings and such – in crisp focus, but reduces
traffic to a shimmering haze, a ghost of motion. Other
famous New York intersections get the same treatment.
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