About the Work
Youngsuk Suh’s Wildfire photographs capture the California landscape during the 2008–2009 brushfires, focusing on fire management and examining nature as an engineered and civilized institution controlled by humans. Rather than portraying the fires as dangerous or catastrophic, Suh trains his camera from a serene distance on the banal oddities occurring in the midst of disaster.
Suh says in his artist statement, “The luminous tones and colors of the photographs are used ironically...Like honeybees that are numbed by smoke before harvesting of honey, fire burns through the history of the representation of nature and tranquilizes our senses. The romantic tradition also tells me that nature is as much an invention of the modernity as history.”
About the Artist
Korean photographer Youngsuk Suh moved to the United States to study photography in 1994. Whether he is photographing interiors, landscapes, soccer players, or gas stations, Suh’s luminous photographs show a unique approach to lighting and the treatment of space. Suh maintains an objective distance from his subjects, witnessing rather than intervening.
Suh’s latest projects, Instant Traveler and Wildfires, explore the complex relationships between humans and nature. Though these photographs seem to present a Romantic view of nature with their soft colors and sweeping views of landscapes, Suh’s imitation of the Romantic tradition is actually ironic. He does not view nature as an untamed wilderness in which man is small and insignificant; instead, he points out man’s sophisticated engineering and maintenance of nature.
