Exhibition Information

			Light in the Beginning

The influence of images on the human perception and thought has rapidly evolved since the invention of photography. We are able to experience the lives of others living in unreachable places and times, thanks to photographers who have traveled around the world capturing such scenes. The camera is a magical tool with the ability to not only make objective and realistic documentations, but also capture the subjective mind of the photographer, and the uncontrollable moment of light. Under the ever-powerful influence of images today, it is becoming more and more difficult to believe in the magic or the artistic depth of a photograph. As more questions of skepticism rise on photography as an art form, we need to re-think the origin of the photographic medium, by going back to the beginning, when we were first captivated by the drawing of time made with light.

During the past 50 years, Linda Connor has made numerous pilgrimages to countries harboring traces of primordial human life and relics of the past, such as India, Mexico, Thailand, Ireland, Peru, Nepal and Egypt, working with her 8x10 large-format camera. She has left places familiar to her and gone exploring in the spiritual places of remote lands, moving back in time in search of connecting points between the present and lives of the past. Like a conjuror decrypting the codes of the universe, she connects signs of the visible world. These images, collected at the doorway to the world beyond, which we cannot see while standing on this land, lead to countless questions about heaven and earth, the sacred and profane, humans and the universe transcending time and space, God, and other realms of the unknown. She demonstrates that, like the constellations, the universe will reveal itself to those who can connect, name and imagine.

Marking the 10th anniversary of Datz Museum of Art, the exhibition of Linda Connor's photography will tell us, those weary of our endless consumption of instantaneous images, a story about the original light remembered by humankind. This will be the first story, about primordial landscapes touched by the light of the beginning. As it is impossible for a single exhibition to show the massive quantity of the artist's works and the broadness of her world, there is a second exhibition scheduled at Datz Museum of Art to tell the stories yet untold.

 

Sangyon Joo, Director