Korean photographer Kim Honghee’s black and white images invite viewers to introspect.

“In silence, there ripples sound

In stillness, motion”

These phrases would finest clarify what Korean photographer Kim Honghee’s work makes an attempt to seize. Greater than photos of panorama, his black and white frames are meditations: a trial and invitation to introspect. In a single body, he freezes a second outdoors an empty hermitage that stands in opposition to the backdrop of a spread of mountains, magnanimous but quiet. A group of such pictures of Honghee type The Inward Eye, a digital video show offered by Chennai-based InKo Centre. Honghee’s type of marrying spirituality along with his ability in pictures, offers rise to some calming photographs, and requires reflection.

Honghee’s tryst with temples in Korea began three a long time in the past, when he was writing for a newspaper. He remembers, “About 30 years in the past, I visited temples throughout Korea. I wished to go to them once more. I used to be a younger man then and now, I’m an previous man over 60 years previous. Nonetheless, via photographing this sequence I realised that I’m nonetheless a younger man who retains wandering spiritually.” Silence and internal peace appear to be Honghee’s preoccupation in relation to pictures. In line with him, peace comes from compassion, and his pictures too displays that very sentiment.

One of many photographs from ‘The Inward Eye’

| Picture Credit score
Kim Honghee

Is there a purpose behind why he has chosen black and white to inform his tales? Sure, in response to Honghee, colors hinder one from approaching the essence. “Black and white consists of plenty that lets one attain the essence of what one needs to say. The essence right here, being silence, peace and compassion in the direction of all issues.” The photographer additionally performs rather a lot with mild, or fairly shadows. “The brighter the sunshine, the darker the shadow. It is a basic idea of life itself. I’ve performed not solely with mild but additionally shadow, the alternative. In any case, they’ve the identical origin.”

On this specific sequence, Honghee attracts consideration to the precinct surrounding a temple, extra particularly, to the hermitages the place monks reside. A hermitage, in his phrases, is “the minds of the temple”. Empty areas appear to be in focus. However, ‘empty’, in Honghee’s dictionary additionally means ‘fullness’. When requested about why he selected to doc empty areas, he says, “I need to ask you if I actually did {photograph} empty areas.”

The Inward Eye is out there for viewing in InKo Centre’s YouTube channel