Photographer Shows Window to His Future

By Cathy Rose A. Garcia

Staff Reporter

Inspired by the Korean shaman ritual of using rice kernels to tell the future, New York-based photographer Ha Hyoung-sun placed rice kernels on his photographs.

``Korean clairvoyants place rice on the table to read the future. I'm imitating them, and not only trying to understand but also trying to project my own future (on the photographs),'' Ha told The Korea Times, while in the midst of preparing for his first solo exhibition in Korea. His exhibition ``Window'' runs through Sept. 16 at the Museum of Photography, Seoul.

For his ``Window'' series, Ha took photographs of different places he visited in the United States, Korea and France, through the windows. While in the process of developing the photographs, he sprinkles rice kernels onto the paper before exposing it to the negative. As a result, his photographs have white rice-shaped bits that seem like tiny bugs floating on the surface.

``These photographs are physically and mentally where I am and where I'm going next. Wherever I go, at a hotel or small bed and breakfast, I take a picture through the window. Basically it's a record or documentation of where I was. I only focus on the window glass or screen because that's where the inside and outside meet, and symbolizes the limit of my knowledge,'' Ha said.