Imagining a River
2024--

 The series 《Imagining a River》begins on the edge of the industrial zone along Korea’s west coast, at Lake Sihwa—once referred to as a “dead lake” due to severe industrial pollution. Later, a tidal power station was constructed at the point where the lake meets the sea, allowing seawater and freshwater to circulate through artificial intervention.

From a geographical perspective, a lake that eventually flows into the sea shares characteristics with a river. Within this series, Lake Sihwa is therefore regarded as a “river” in motion.

 Here, people do not truly surf in this “river.” The surf park depicted in the photographs sits along the lakeshore, with palm trees and facilities that are entirely man-made. The boundary of the industrial zone becomes a site where reality collides with utopian imagination. Over time, emotions and perceptions are gradually projected onto the act of walking along, and looking at, this “river.”

“Standing on a fisher’s boat, climbing an unfinished high-rise, passing a wild deer at the lakeside, or speaking with Sri Lankan night-shift workers about their homeland—these encounters turn into fragments of imagery, forming a private narrative with the “river.”

 Across temporal scales, rivers have always borne witness to the relationships between humans and nature, and between humans and society. Situated between the real and the fictional, this series does not remain at the level of documentation; instead, it allows memory to regain its fluidity and uses photography to respond to place, emotion, and time.

 As Norman Maclean writes in A River Runs Through It: “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.”