Han Hee-joon - Conditions for an Image

Photography was a physical object long before scholars began to speak explicitly about its materiality. Negative, paper, glass, metal, emulsion, pigment and frame have always belonged to photography’s physical existence, yet for much of its history critical attention focused primarily on what the image represented. Photography was discussed as representation, document, sign, testimony or record of a gaze. The object that carried the image could easily become transparent - something that enabled the photograph to be seen without necessarily becoming part of what was being seen.

One of the important shifts in photographic studies around the turn of the twenty-first century was the questioning of that transparency. Elizabeth Edwards argued that the material and presentational form of a photograph is not simply an addition to its representation but participates in the production of meaning. Together with Janice Hart, she developed this perspective in Photographs Objects Histories: On the Materiality of Images, proposing that photographs should be understood simultaneously as images and as things that exist within particular temporal, spatial and social conditions.¹ Paper, surface, scale, storage, handling and modes of display cease, in this account, to be neutral technical properties. A photograph also means through the way it exists as an object.

The issue became still more visible as contemporary photography increasingly moved beyond the autonomous print hung on a wall. In his 2005 essay Photography’s Expanded Field, George Baker attempted to describe a condition in which the established boundaries and forms of photography could no longer be taken for granted.² Photography might enter into relations with projection, installation, sequence or three-dimensional objects without the question of medium being reducible to the status of a single print. It therefore becomes necessary to ask not only what a photograph represents, but how it exists, what it is made from, what happens to it in space, and how its physical form shapes the experience of the image. This is not an entirely new problem. One of its historical precedents can be found in the Pictorialism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Gum bichromate, developed intensively by Robert Demachy and other photographers associated with the international Pictorialist movement, made the print a site of direct intervention. Pigment, paper, the application and removal of the image-forming layer, and decisions made during development meant that the final image was not simply the mechanical consequence of a negative. In Robert Demachy’s case, the visible participation of the photographer’s hand also became part of the argument for photography’s status as an art.³

More than a century later, however, the same process can support a very different understanding of the medium. Gum bichromate and cyanotype need not lead to a reconstruction of Pictorialist aesthetics or to a nostalgic return to the past. They can instead become tools for investigating the relationship between an image and its material existence. This is where Han Hee-joon’s practice becomes particularly interesting. Historical photographic processes meet plastic, fabric, glass, aluminium, iron, water and digital technology. A photograph may hang freely in space, fracture with glass, be disrupted by crumpled metal, or emerge directly through the action of waves and sunlight. Yet this is not simply an expansion of the list of possible supports. Something more fundamental is taking place: the artist gradually shifts authorship away from the complete pre-design of a result towards the construction of conditions in which a result can emerge. He chooses material, place, duration, exposure method and the scope of his own intervention, while leaving room for substances and environmental forces to respond. He must then decide which unforeseen changes remain relevant to the question at hand and which deserve to be retained. Materiality, in this sense, does not mean relinquishing authorship. It requires authorship to be understood differently.

Han Hee-joon first encountered photography through a high-school photography club and has been making photographic work since the 1990s. For many years he worked primarily with silver gelatin printing. Around 2005 he became interested in alternative photographic processes, and in 2010 he began working with cyanotype. He learned the fundamentals from Moon Sang-wook, later director of Art Space Gotgan, and subsequently developed his knowledge by observing other artists, studying material available online and conducting his own experiments. As he recalls, adapting the methods he encountered to his own materials and working conditions involved repeated trials and failures.⁴ Earlier, he had spent roughly two years working intensively with collodion, acquiring a camera, building equipment and preparing his own chemistry. Concerns about strong fumes and the possible effects of the substances he was handling on his health led him towards cyanotype. His later move into gum bichromate grew partly from a desire to broaden the chromatic possibilities of the image. These changes did not follow a predetermined historical programme. Each process entered his practice in response to questions that emerged through making.⁵

What had fascinated the photographer in the darkroom was the gradual appearance of an image. Alternative processes allowed him to take that experience further: to prepare the light-sensitive layer himself, choose the support, determine the method of coating, and respond to the changes produced through exposure, washing and drying. Photography began to involve not only deciding what should be represented but constructing the physical circumstances under which a representation might appear. This helps explain his later experiments with matter, because they are not simply a collection of technical curiosities. They are connected by the conviction that making a photograph can itself become a way of thinking, and that the final result need not be fully known before the process begins.

Historical Pictorialism provides an important point of reference, but the relationship needs to be defined carefully. Han Hee-joon is interested in the photographer’s active involvement in producing a print: the choice of paper and pigment, the application of the sensitised layer, the process of washing, and the decision about when to stop. At the same time, he makes clear that he did not turn to alternative processes in order to continue the Pictorialist tradition. What matters more to him now than the imitation of a historical style is the material potential of the processes themselves.⁶

This distinction is fundamental. Pictorialist intervention allowed photographers to subject the print to formal decisions and to emphasise its authored character. Han Hee-joon retains that space of decision, but he does not use it solely to force matter into a previously conceived form. He is equally interested in what occurs when a material behaves differently from what he expected. The historical question of the photographer’s hand is therefore extended: the artist does not have to produce every visible trace directly in order to remain responsible for the final work. This becomes especially clear in works made from discarded plastic. Han Hee-joon subjects the material to heat and pressure and observes as it loses its original form, developing bubbles, folds and entanglements until the familiar object begins to resemble biological structures, cave interiors or unfamiliar landscapes. He then places the transformed plastic directly into a darkroom enlarger in place of film. Its thickness, transparency, folds and overlapping layers transmit and block light unevenly. The resulting image is transferred to lith film and can then become the basis for a gum bichromate or cyanotype print.⁷

In the monumental Landscape of Transformation #1 / #6 from 2025, gum bichromate works measuring 220 × 320 cm, plastic ceases to be recognisable as an everyday object. What remains are pale, fluid structures emerging from a dark field. In places they resemble membranes, vessels or tissue; elsewhere they suggest mineral deposits or sections of an unfamiliar terrain. What is striking is the uncertainty of scale. Something originating in a small discarded object can be read simultaneously as a microscopic structure and as an expansive landscape. The size of the prints further detaches the image from its source: the viewer no longer encounters a piece of plastic but a field of forms whose origin is no longer self-evident.⁸ That ambiguity is not produced at the level of composition alone. It is preceded by a sequence of physical transformations. The plastic first loses its utilitarian form through heat and pressure, then becomes an irregular matrix modulating light in the enlarger, then an image on lith film, and finally a pigment print. The object becomes material, the material becomes a matrix, the matrix becomes an image, and the image becomes a physical object once again. It is during these translations that forms emerge which could not have been entirely designed in advance.

For this reason, the environmental subject of these works does not exhaust their meaning. Han Hee-joon is interested in a state in which traces of an earlier form remain, but familiar categories are no longer sufficient to name what has appeared. He understands transformation both as a metaphor for environmental change and as a property of the photographic process itself. When scale, colour, surface and context change, the object continues to leave a trace, but photography allows that trace to be seen differently.⁹ Landscape of Transformation makes this especially clear because the visible result does not function simply as documentation of altered plastic. It is itself another stage of transformation.

The same process clarifies the boundary between intention and event. The artist initiates the transformation, chooses when to apply heat and pressure, and can decide when to stop, but he cannot design every bubble, fold or flow. The material responds to the conditions he has created, and the next decision is made in response to that behaviour. Experiment, in this practice, is not passive waiting for chance. It is a sequence of actions, responses and renewed decisions. The principle becomes even more explicit in works made at Daecheong Lake. Han Hee-joon prepares a sensitised surface, chooses the location and sets the basic conditions of exposure, but he does not control the movement of waves, shifting wind or changing sunlight. During exposures lasting more than four hours, these natural conditions participate directly in the formation of the image.¹⁰ This is not simply photography of a lake. Elements of the environment that would normally stand in front of the camera are brought into the process by which the image itself is formed. In The Water Flows Tenderly from 2024, the later physical existence of the photograph is equally important. Cyanotype fabrics hang and curve through the exhibition space, while the image changes with folds, viewing direction and the position of the viewer.¹¹ Photography is not replaced by installation here. Photography itself begins to occupy space differently from a conventional framed print.

A changing understanding of time follows naturally from such a practice. Time had interested Han Hee-joon in earlier work, but alternative processes allowed him to experience it not only as a subject but as a force that materially shapes a surface. Every layer of a gum bichromate print must be coated, dried, exposed, washed and assessed before another can be added. Each new decision depends on what the previous stage has left behind. The surface therefore accumulates not only pigment but successive periods of work. At Daecheong Lake, exposure time contains changes in sunlight, wind and water that can no longer be separated into individual moments in the finished image.¹² Han Hee-joon’s photography does not so much freeze time as allow time to settle into matter. Time is not simply something represented; it is one of the actual conditions through which the image acquires its form.

Supports play a similar role. The artist recalls asking himself why a photograph must be flat, why it must hang on a wall, and why it should exist only on paper. Rather than answering such questions through theory, he tested them through paper, hanji, fabric, glass and metal.¹³ With hanji, the fibres and the absorption of sensitiser remain visible within the work; fabric can hang freely and bend the image; broken glass allows physical fragmentation to become entangled with fragmented memory. Crumpled and then re-flattened aluminium retains the history of deformation, and that history directly alters the way a photographic image appears on its surface.¹⁴

Between Reappearances #1 / #2 / #3 from 2026 demonstrates this relationship on a far more intimate scale than the monumental Landscape of Transformation. These small cyanotypes on aluminium plates depict faces that remain recognisable but never appear evenly across the surface. Intense cyanotype blue is interrupted by folds, reflections and irregularities in the metal. In some areas the face becomes legible; in others it gives way to the physical topography of the support. Image and material are not independent layers. The visibility of the representation depends on the state of the surface upon which it attempts to appear.¹⁵ The technical cause of this effect is inseparable from its meaning. Han Hee-joon unfolds previously crumpled aluminium, coats the surface with sensitiser and exposes it in contact with a positive film image of a face. Because the film cannot lie evenly against the folded metal, some parts of the image appear clearly while others weaken or disappear. The artist associates this irreversibility with memory and identity: the metal can be flattened, but the history of its deformation cannot be completely erased. The face likewise remains present, yet the way it appears now depends upon traces that the material already carries.

Placed together, Landscape of Transformation and Between Reappearances reveal a distinction more significant than their use of alternative photographic processes. In the first, matter gives rise to representation. Transformed plastic gradually loses its recognisability as an object and, through successive translations, generates an image. In the second, the situation is almost reversed: a recognisable face attempts to emerge on a surface that will not allow it to appear without interruption. Material does not generate the representation from the outset but resists it, breaks it apart and determines how much of it can be seen. This comparison shows that materiality does not perform a single recurring function in Han Hee-joon’s work. Material can become the source of an image, its matrix, its support, an obstacle to visibility or a force that changes the act of viewing. A different relationship between subject and substance appears in works devoted to POSCO workers. Han Hee-joon introduced iron powder into the gum process - a material directly associated with the industrial environment of the people portrayed. Iron is both a physical component of the image surface and a reference to industry, labour and the time spent by those workers within a particular environment.¹⁶ The material does not illustrate the subject after the fact. Subject and substance meet on the same surface.

It would be easy at this point to invoke the attractive idea of the "co-authorship of matter." Han Hee-joon’s own responses suggest something more precise. He does not regard light, water or materials as authors possessing intentions comparable to his own. He does, however, recognise that they genuinely participate in shaping the result and may produce forms he could not have anticipated.¹⁷ Nor does this mean that every irregularity is automatically accepted. The artist distinguishes between a technical problem, a visually interesting result unrelated to the subject, and a change that opens a meaningful possibility for the work. Experience expands what can be controlled, but it also improves his ability to recognise the significance of what was not planned. Responsibility for selection remains with the artist.¹⁸

This is where the most distinctive logic of his practice becomes visible. Han Hee-joon does not simply design a finished image. He constructs a situation in which an image can emerge, observes the response of matter, and then makes another decision. The structure can be described in three stages: establishing conditions - material response - artistic decision. This is not a formula the artist himself uses, but an interpretation that becomes visible when different areas of his practice are considered together. It reveals a common mechanism across works that are formally very different. The same logic operates in layered gum bichromate printing, where the result of one layer informs the next; in the transformation of plastic; in the exposures at Daecheong Lake; and in the interaction between a facial image and crumpled aluminium. In each case, a decision precedes material action without determining the process completely.

Authorship therefore remains intact, although it no longer means complete control over every visible trace. Han Hee-joon considers himself the author because he formulates the question that begins the work, chooses the place and materials, evaluates the results, interprets them and decides what will finally be presented. Particularly revealing is his recognition that refraining from further intervention can itself be an artistic decision. Sometimes the appropriate response to what has appeared on the surface is simply to leave it as it is.¹⁹ This way of working requires a different kind of attention from the disciplined execution of a predetermined plan. Han Hee-joon even speaks of listening to music or walking before he begins work because relaxation and sensory openness help him notice subtle changes in materials and surroundings.²⁰ This is not merely a biographical detail. It shows that receptiveness to the unforeseen is not the absence of discipline. On the contrary, a process must be understood well enough to distinguish a failure from a possibility, while not being controlled so rigidly that every deviation is treated as an error.

From this perspective, Han Hee-joon’s relationship with Pictorialism becomes more interesting than his use of gum bichromate alone. Historical Pictorialists exploited the space between negative and final print in order to construct an image actively. Han Hee-joon retains that space of decision but also opens it to physical processes whose outcomes cannot be fully programmed. The historical question of how much a photographer may intervene becomes a contemporary question about how much responsibility an artist can retain for a result that develops partly beyond direct control. This does not sever gum bichromate from its historical inheritance. It changes the function that its material responsiveness can perform in contemporary practice. The same recognition complicates the environmental dimension of the work. It would be easy to describe an artist who collects discarded plastic and uses historical photographic processes as an alternative to contemporary industrial culture. Han Hee-joon does not allow himself such a comfortable position. He acknowledges that work dealing with the environment still consumes energy and water and requires photographic chemistry, pigments and materials such as resin. Reusing discarded plastic does not automatically make the entire process environmentally beneficial, and the artist openly admits that he does not fully understand the environmental consequences of every substance he uses.²¹ This awareness prevents the romanticisation of alternative processes as inherently ecological or "clean." Materials have their own histories of production, toxicity, energy consumption and afterlives. An artist investigating the relationship between people and the environment remains part of that relationship rather than observing it safely from outside.

Nor does Han Hee-joon oppose historical processes to digital technology. Photoshop is used to adjust tonal values and forms and to prepare images for transfer to lith film. The image then changes again through support, sensitised layer, exposure, pigment and washing.²² Digital and analogue stages are not competing worlds but parts of a single working method shaped by the needs of a particular piece. This is also important for the broader question of how alternative photographic processes function in contemporary photography. Historical origin does not automatically determine present meaning. Han Hee-joon describes gum bichromate and cyanotype as contemporary artistic media with historical origins. Knowledge of their history helps him understand their characteristics, but their present relevance depends on the questions, materials and experiences with which they are combined.²³ It is therefore significant that the artist continues to regard his objects and installations as photography. For him, the boundary does not run between photography and objecthood in such a way that three-dimensionality automatically means abandoning the photographic medium. His works remain grounded in the formation of an image through light-sensitive matter, time and contact, while surface, scale, installation and the viewer’s movement can become as important as what is represented.²⁴ This is precisely where Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart’s account of photographic materiality and George Baker’s expanded field provide useful contexts. Not because Han Hee-joon’s work illustrates their theories - there is no basis for attributing such an intention to him - but because those theories provide a language for what the works make visible. A photograph can be both representation and thing, and an expansion of its physical form need not entail the loss of photographic identity.

Seen together, the monumental images derived from transformed plastic and the small faces emerging across crumpled aluminium reveal a consistency deeper than their shared processes. In one case, matter releases an image from the recognisable identity of its source object; in the other, the image cannot free itself from the history already inscribed in the material surface. In both cases, the artist creates a field of action without knowing all its consequences in advance. Matter is neither the passive executor of a preconceived design nor a romanticised autonomous author. It introduces a response to which Han Hee-joon must in turn respond.

Not every such response becomes a work, and that is precisely why this way of working matters. Its value lies not in surrendering initiative to chance but in maintaining a tension between openness and responsibility. Han Hee-joon allows an event within the process to alter an initial intention, but he does not surrender the final decision to the material. Historical photographic processes acquire contemporary relevance not because they are old, nor simply because they involve handwork. They become methods of thinking through making: preparing, observing, waiting, responding and choosing.

Towards the end of his written responses, Han Hee-joon describes photography as both an image and an object in which time and matter accumulate.²⁵ One more element can be added to that formulation: his works also accumulate decisions, including those made before the process begins and those that could not have been anticipated beforehand. Perhaps this is the most important contemporary possibility he finds in processes inherited from the nineteenth century. They do not take him back to a world before digital photography. They allow him to create a situation in which an image is not merely the execution of an earlier idea, but can also become a source of new knowledge for the artist himself. History provides the process, the artist establishes the conditions, matter responds, and the next decision emerges from what has actually taken place.

Photography remains an authored act, but authorship need not mean absolute command over the result. It may demand something more difficult: the ability to notice what was not planned, to recognise whether it matters, and to take responsibility for the decision that this particular trace is worth allowing to remain.

Notes

1. Elizabeth Edwards, "Material Beings: Objecthood and Ethnographic Photographs," Visual Studies, vol. 17, no. 1, 2002, pp. 67-75; Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart, eds., Photographs Objects Histories: On the Materiality of Images, London: Routledge, 2004, especially Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart, "Introduction: Photographs as Objects," pp. 1-15.

2. George Baker, "Photography’s Expanded Field," October, no. 114, Autumn 2005, pp. 120-140, DOI: 10.1162/016228705774889574.

3. Lisa Hostetler, "International Pictorialism," Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, October 2004; see also Robert Demachy, Une Balleteuse, 1900, gum bichromate print, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession no. 33.43.58.

4. Han Hee-joon, Photography, Matter, Time. A Conversation on Photography as Image, Material, Process and Object, written responses to questions by Grzegorz Gorczyński, October 2026, English translation of the Korean responses, unpublished research material, pp. 3-4.

5. Ibid., pp. 5-6.

6. Ibid., pp. 7-8.

7. Ibid., pp. 12-13.

8. Ibid., p. 14. Ills. 1-2: Han Hee-joon, Landscape of Transformation #1 and Landscape of Transformation #6, 2025, gum bichromate, 220 × 320 cm each. Reproductions supplied by the artist with the interview material, October 2026.

9. Ibid., pp. 33-34.

10. Ibid., pp. 13, 27.

11. Ibid., p. 26.

12. Ibid., pp. 27-28.

13. Ibid., p. 16.

14. Ibid., pp. 16-17.

15. Ibid., pp. 13, 21. Ills. 3-4: Han Hee-joon, selected works from Between Reappearances #1 / #2 / #3, 2026, cyanotype on aluminium plate, 20 × 17 cm each. Reproductions supplied by the artist with the interview material, October 2026.

16. Ibid., p. 17.

17. Ibid., p. 32.

18. Ibid., pp. 22-23.

19. Ibid., p. 31.

20. Ibid., p. 32.

21. Ibid., pp. 29-30.

22. Ibid., p. 13.

23. Ibid., pp. 35-36.

24. Ibid., pp. 24-25.

25. Ibid., p. 36.