Jungjin Lee: Process and Etymology

Jungjin Lee teases out the etymology of the word ‘photograph’ within her artworks, utilising an intricate, protracted photographic process, involving the painterly application of light-sensitive emulsion to paper. ‘Photos’, Greek for ‘light’, and ‘graphé’, Greek for ‘writing’; a contraction of ancient nouns that makes for one rather poetic vernacular word, and one which aptly defines Lee’s practice. 

The raw photographs in Unseen, in and of themselves, seek out form and texture within the Icelandic landscape. Dark mountain slopes draped in snow are abstracted through high contrast, rendering the scene in only two tones. Seascapes, waves collapsing on the shore that resemble the drama of a Gustave Courbet, or anfractuous rock faces glaring in the fjord, provide Lee with the textural qualities she searches for. All of this the photographer accentuates through the use of a high grain, high contrast film stock, and particular processing techniques (such as processing the film with hot water, rather than the usual tepid). Lines can appear blurred due to the grain, formed by large silver halide crystals, offering less linear precision than finer grained film stocks. Tonally, details in both highlights and shadows are often sacrificed for the sake of formal abstraction through the high contrast of the film. By using alternative techniques to process the film, a subtle mottling effect is produced by the heat contraction of the film’s emulsion, called film reticulation, best exemplified in the midtones of Unseen #67.

This initial process, producing grainy, stark negatives, is then complemented and augmented through Lee’s printing process. In the darkroom, the photographer begins by warming and liquidising a silver nitrate emulsion, which is then painted onto paper using a badger or swine hair brush. The thick, heavy bristles of this brush contribute to the linear texture of the surface of the print. The process of application is repeated until the paper is coated entirely and somewhat evenly. After much exposing, dodging, burning, and split grading, the print is processed using ‘developer’, ‘stop’, and ‘fix’. Emulsion applied by hand can be delicate, and Lee may have applied the chemicals using another, softer brush, or with a spray bottle. Once fully developed, the print is then left to dry, during which time the paper contracts and develops its own textures and unevenness. These prints, which are themselves necessarily unique, are then digitised and reproduced as archival pigment prints, a process which again requires much labour and artistic input to reproduce the tones of the analogue print, as well as the particular visual textures of the film and the print.

Lee pays particular attention to the image she intends to print when coating the paper. In Unseen #67, for example, she paints in graceful arcs above the clouds, congruous with the large, clear skies. Bravura brushstrokes rush in towards the shore with the waves in Unseen #55. Diagonal marks cross one another in Unseen #65, emphasising the drama of the tempest depicted. It is in this way that the artist forms her own process-based language which harmonises with the content of her photographs, resembling in many ways a late John Constable (Rainstorm over the Sea, painted between 1824 and 1828, for example), and simultaneously the Pictorialists. This group, particularly Robert Demachy, like Lee, were especially fascinated by the painterly side of photographic processes, and the etymological implications of ‘photos’ ‘graphé’.