Hyungho Park. Taking a Photograph Is Not Enough

For some photographers, taking a photograph is only the beginning. Hyungho Park is one of them. He does not treat shooting and printing as separate stages. In his practice, what happens after the exposure remains part of the making of the image, and a photograph can acquire a different appearance and meaning as the work unfolds.

His practice belongs to a broader contemporary interest in historical photographic processes. Yet these processes are not simply being revived for the sake of historical reconstruction. They can become starting points for experiments with contemporary materials, technologies, and ways of constructing an image. In 2024, Hyungho Park presented 퇴색화 (Toesaekhwa, “Fading”) at Changdong Gallery in Changwon. The exhibition focused on drying flowers and the changes in their forms over time, and the project was later shown in Seoul in early 2025. The artist has published three photobooks and has taken part in 16 solo exhibitions and more than 220 group exhibitions.[7] Those figures, however, tell us little about what is distinctive in his practice. More revealing is the way the artist understands the relationship between photography, process, and the material image.

Not Nostalgia, but the Desire to Experience

Hyungho Park's interest in historical photographic processes grew out of the transition from analogue to digital photography. He does not describe that shift as a rejection of digital technology or as a simple form of nostalgia. He acknowledges its convenience, speed, and efficiency. At the same time, that acceleration made him curious about a different kind of photographic experience. He speaks of looking at how photographers of earlier generations worked and of wanting, at least indirectly, to experience the concentration and passion they brought to making images.[1]

That distinction matters. The artist's interest lies less in the historical camera or the aesthetic of an earlier period than in the experience of making an image. His position echoes Lyle Rexer's discussion of the renewed interest in old photographic processes. Rexer argues that the contemporary return to historical techniques is not simply an attempt to restore the past. These processes matter because they allow photography itself, and the status of the photographic object, to be reconsidered from a contemporary perspective.[2] For Hyungho Park, the past becomes a resource for making work in the present.

A Hunger for Expression

One of the clearest insights into Hyungho Park's practice comes from the way he combines different processes. Asked whether these methods are simply technical stages within a fixed workflow, he rejects that idea. Each process, he suggests, responds to the image's need for further expression.[1] This helps explain why technique occupies such a particular place in his work. Cyanotype, gum bichromate, gel-based processes, and various forms of hand manipulation are not ends in themselves. A new process enters the work when the image seems to call for something more, and the decision may come only after the artist has seen what the previous stage has produced.

The resulting practice is open-ended. A particular result can prompt another decision, and that decision can alter the direction of the image. Technique is therefore more than a neutral instrument: it can shape the expressive possibilities of the work as much as it serves them. Recent writing on alternative photographic processes has likewise moved beyond treating these methods simply as technical procedures.[3] Historical processes are increasingly considered in relation to photographic materiality and individual artistic practice, often within hybrid workflows where analogue and digital methods exist side by side.

One Organism

Hyungho Park does not identify a single moment at which an artwork comes into being. Planning, selecting the subject, photographing, preparing materials by digital and analogue means, and making the final print all belong to the same process.[1] Elsewhere, the artist describes these stages as being like a single organism.[1]

The metaphor is apt because the creative centre of his practice does not simply shift from the camera to the print. The field in which the image is made becomes broader. The exposure is one part of the process; the negative provides an important basis for what follows, but it is not the endpoint. The print may be the result of the work so far, while also becoming the starting point for another decision. Hyungho Park's practice therefore resembles a process of continual revision. What emerges at one stage can affect what happens next, and an image that was not fully imaginable at the moment of exposure may only reveal itself later, through the physical work. The question is therefore less where an image begins than how far we extend the process through which it comes into being.

The Negative Is More Than a Record

Hyungho Park describes the negative as a fundamental material and tool, even a kind of “skeleton” of the work.[1] It is the result of the photographic act, but for the artist it does not remain merely a record of what stood before the camera.

The idea has a long history. In pictorialist practice, the negative and the print were not always treated as neutral technical stages. The possibility of altering an image was closely tied to debates over whether photography could function as an art and over the role of the artist in shaping the final work.[4] Digital preparation adds another layer to this process. A negative can be edited or transformed with the later printing method already in mind. Its role consequently changes: it is no longer simply evidence of what was photographed, but becomes part of the design of an image that does not yet exist. The photographer works not only with what has already been recorded, but also with what that record might become.

When the Print Becomes More Important Than the Photograph

Hyungho Park takes this idea further. He acknowledges that the final result can sometimes become more important than the photograph from which it originated. He may even decide whether to introduce another process only after seeing the result of the previous one.[1]

The role of the print changes at this point. It is no longer simply the final destination of a photograph. Looking at the completed image can reveal possibilities that were not visible earlier, and those possibilities can lead to another stage of work. Photography becomes less a linear movement from exposure to print than an open process in which one result can generate another.

That shift also changes the questions we ask when looking at such work. “How was the photograph made?” is no longer enough. A more useful question may be: How was this particular image made? The difference is small in wording but significant in emphasis. The first question places the camera and the exposure at the centre of the process; the second includes everything that happens on the way to the final image.

When Material Changes the Direction of the Work

Hyungho Park places considerable importance on paper, pigments, light, temperature, water, and other materials. Their properties can directly affect the final result.[1] Material is therefore not simply a passive surface on which an image is placed. Each material behaves in its own way, and those responses can influence what the artist does next.

Elizabeth Edwards has argued that photographs should be understood not only as images but also as material and sensory objects. Their meaning cannot be reduced to what can be read from the visible surface alone.[5] She has also shown how the material practices surrounding photography affect the ways images function as objects connected to memory and history.[6] In hand-made photographic processes, this becomes especially tangible. The condition of the paper, the behaviour of the pigment, the water, and the way successive layers are applied can all alter the image itself. The artist chooses and controls, but also responds to what the material does.

The Luck of an Error

Another revealing aspect of Hyungho Park's responses is his attitude toward chance and error. Under controlled conditions, a process can produce relatively predictable results. Yet a small variation or unexpected mistake may open a new possibility. The artist describes such moments as a kind of luck.[1]

The term is especially apt for hand-made photographic processes, where error does not necessarily mean failure. An unexpected mark, tonal shift, or surface effect may introduce something that was not part of the original plan and eventually alter the direction of the work. This does not mean surrendering the process to chance. Hyungho Park still plans, selects, and controls many aspects of his work. What he leaves open is the possibility that materials may respond in unexpected ways. Authorship, in this context, is therefore closer to a negotiation between intention and what actually happens during the making of the image.

This helps explain part of the continuing appeal of historical processes in the digital age. Their value lies not only in their appearance or historical associations, but also in the degree of uncertainty built into the process itself.

Time Has More Than One Meaning

Time appears in Hyungho Park's work on several levels. There is the time required to prepare materials and make a print, but there is also the time contained in the world being photographed. The artist points to seasonal conditions, weather, and the amount of natural light as factors that can influence the result.[1] The time required to make a photograph and the time unfolding within its subject are therefore closely related.

In 퇴색화, this becomes particularly clear. The drying flowers register a process of transformation. Their changing forms do not necessarily signify disappearance. Instead, change itself becomes part of the image.[7] Photography can involve two different temporalities: the time required to make the photograph and the time passing within the photographed world. In alternative photographic processes, these two forms of time can meet. The slowness of printing is no longer merely a technical inconvenience; it can enter into a relationship with the temporality represented in the image.

Photography records time, but it is also made in time.

Pictorialism Without the Museum

Hyungho Park's decision to describe his practice in relation to pictorialism is particularly revealing. He says that his work follows a path connected to pictorialism, but he does not treat it as a historical style to be reproduced. What matters is the expressive and aesthetic potential of the image, while the means of achieving it can change.[1]

Historical pictorialism was not simply a visual style. It was also an attempt to establish photography as an artistic medium. Debates over intervention in the photographic image were closely tied to questions of authorship and to the possibility of photography becoming more than mechanical recording.[4] Hyungho Park carries that question into the present without confining it to a historical repertoire of tools.

He can use a traditional process while working with artificial light, make an image by hand while preparing its source material digitally, and remain interested in the camera and its mechanisms while exploring the painterly and material qualities of the resulting image. His practice is therefore better understood as a contemporary reworking of one of pictorialism's central questions: what happens when the photographic image becomes an expression rather than merely a record?

The question belongs to the present as much as to the past.

Taking a Photograph Is Not Enough

The title of this essay now takes on a more precise meaning. Hyungho Park does not deny the importance of photography or of the camera itself. On the contrary, he stresses the significance of the photographic mechanism and the act of making a photograph.[1] In his practice, however, exposure opens a process that continues through the negative, the choice of materials, and the various stages of printing and transformation.

As the image passes through these stages, its direction may change. A material response or an unexpected result can lead to a new decision. A finished print may even send the artist back to the image and begin another phase of work. Photography, in this sense, is less a finished product created by a single exposure than an image shaped through an ongoing exchange between looking, photographing, materials, and artistic decisions.

This understanding also recalls Geoffrey Batchen's insistence on photography as a material and cultural phenomenon, together with his emphasis on the changing identity of the photographic medium.[8] What remains particularly interesting in Hyungho Park's practice is the absence of a fixed endpoint. An image can generate another stage of work, and the photograph can move into another form without simply ceasing to be photographic.

For that reason, the question “Is this still photography, or has it become graphic art or painting?” may be less useful than it first appears. The artist himself does not try to establish a firm boundary between these categories.[1] A more productive question may be how far a photograph can move while remaining connected to photography.

Hyungho Park's work does not offer a definitive answer. It suggests instead that the boundary is more fluid than we often assume. An image may be completed long after the original exposure and still remain connected to the photographic act from which it began.

Perhaps that is why taking a photograph is not enough. A photograph may simply be the beginning of an image whose final form emerges much later.

Notes

[1] Hyungho Park, responses to the author's research questions and additional comments on pictorialism, private correspondence, September 2026.

[2] Lyle Rexer, “Photography's Antiquarian Avant-Garde: The New Wave in Old Processes”, Aperture, Spring 2003, https://archive.aperture.org/article/2003/01/01/photographys-antiquarian-avant-garde-the-new-wave-in-old-processes [accessed 19 September 2026].

[3] Morgan Post, Alternative Process Photography for the Contemporary Photographer: A Beginner's Guide, New York: Routledge, 2022.

[4] Lisa Hostetler, “International Pictorialism”, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004, https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/international-pictorialism [accessed 19 September 2026].

[5] Elizabeth Edwards, “Objects of Affect: Photography Beyond the Image”, Annual Review of Anthropology 41 (2012), pp. 221-234, DOI: 10.1146/annurev-anthro-092611-145708.

[6] Elizabeth Edwards, “Photography and the Material Performance of the Past”, History and Theory 48, no. 4 (2009), pp. 130-150, DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2303.2009.00523.x.

[7] “세월의 과정에서 찾은 아름다움” [“Beauty Found in the Process of Time”], Gyeongnam Shinmun, 25 September 2024, https://www.knnews.co.kr/news/articleView.php?gubun=life&idxno=1442833 [accessed 19 September 2026]; “[성동문화재단] 2025 함께잇다 기획 초대전 [퇴색화-박형호 사진전]” [“Hyungho Park Photography Exhibition 퇴색화 as part of the 함께잇다 programme], Seoul Culture Portal, 2025, https://culture.seoul.go.kr/culture/culture/cultureEvent/view.do?cultcode=152031&menuNo=200008 [accessed 19 September 2026].

[8] Geoffrey Batchen, Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.

Bibliography

Batchen, Geoffrey. Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.

Edwards, Elizabeth. “Objects of Affect: Photography Beyond the Image”. Annual Review of Anthropology 41 (2012): 221-234.

Edwards, Elizabeth. “Photography and the Material Performance of the Past”. History and Theory 48, no. 4 (2009): 130-150.

Hostetler, Lisa. “International Pictorialism”. Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004.

Park, Hyungho. Responses to the author's research questions and additional comments on pictorialism. Private correspondence, September 2026.

Post, Morgan. Alternative Process Photography for the Contemporary Photographer: A Beginner's Guide. New York: Routledge, 2022.

Rexer, Lyle. Photography's Antiquarian Avant-Garde: The New Wave in Old Processes. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002.

“세월의 과정에서 찾은 아름다움” [“Beauty Found in the Process of Time”]. Gyeongnam Shinmun, 25 September 2024.

“[성동문화재단] 2025 함께잇다 기획 초대전 [퇴색화-박형호 사진전]” [“Hyungho Park Photography Exhibition 퇴색화 as part of the 함께잇다 programme]. Seoul Culture Portal, 2025.