MINE SUBLIME

(2016)

Gelatin silver prints. 17.5 x 23.5 inches. Edition of 5.

Near Cheorwon, the South Korean side of the Demilitarized Zone separating it from North Korea is a dense network of military fortifications set among extensive and carefully cultivated rice paddies. Minefields dot the landscape.

Demarcated by strands of barbwire, these plots of land stand out for their dense overgrowth of vegetation, untouched since the devastating war that tore apart this countryside 60 years previous to the making of these photographs.

In the Romantic landscape, the concept of the Sublime was closely identified with vistas of virgin nature that provoke a sense of beauty coupled with terror. There is little terror left in the modern, tamed and sculpted landscape, except perhaps as represented by such minefields. These vestiges of war, necessarily undisturbed, offer the possibility of an ecology restored, of a new form of pure, virgin Nature.