Atta Kim (b. 1956) is one of Korea's leading contemporary photographers who has been working since the mid-1980s, based on philosophical questions about existence. Kim's curiosity about the outside world has led him to photograph people from diverse backgrounds, and he has expanded his recognition as an artist.

In 2002, he was selected to represent Korea at the São Paulo Biennial, and in 2006, he held the first solo exhibition by an Asian artist at the International Center of Photography in New York.

The phrase "all beings are born and die" is the core idea that runs through Kim's work. He has used photography and nature itself as his medium to express his fundamental thoughts on the cycle of life, where all beings influence, connect, and dissolve each other in relationships. His name, ‘김아타(Kim Atta)’, is a combination of the words for "A (我)," meaning "I," and "Tta (他)," meaning "you," symbolizing his contemplation on life and the idea that all beings exist in relationships with one another.

Kim began traveling around the country in the mid-1980s, meeting various people and experiencing their lives firsthand, documenting them in photographs. He lived with 350 patients in a psychiatric hospital, went into a coal mine 1,500 meters underground, and lived with 150 human cultural assets to learn their philosophies, all in an attempt to penetrate into their lives and look into their "psyche.”  

In the in-der-Welt-sein series, the artist moves from understanding people to understanding things. The series, titled ‘in-der-Welt-sein,’ is a departure from Heidegger's philosophy, in which the artist relies on dim starlight and moonlight from 3 to 5 a.m. to capture natural objects such as stones and grass with a 1-2 hour exposure time.

Heidegger proposed the concept of ‘Dasein,’ or ‘Being-in-the-world,’ in which all beings do not exist in isolation but interact with other beings in the world. In-der-Welt-sein is the artist's experimental work that captures the process of becoming one with the object through interaction with nature, as a being in this relationship.

In the Deconstruction series, the artist's thoughts on the unity of nature and humans, or the union of self and things, are more evident. In the series, naked people in a natural setting, such as a rice field, are scattered like the surrounding grass and stones. The artist says, "Deconstruction is the act of sowing human beings, a mass of ideas, into the fields of nature.”

The people in Kim's photographs are revealed to be assimilated into nature, no different from stones in a field, with the 'I' as a subject dissolved. This is contrary to Western modern thought, which begins with "I think, therefore I exist (Cogito, ergo sum)," and later becomes the practical starting point for the central idea of his work, "All beings are born and die."

The Museum Project series, which began in 1995, was Kim's first series of color photographs in which he placed people in transparent acrylic boxes as if on display and photographed them in various locations. At first, he placed naked men and women, crouching or standing, in places such as forests, roads, and department stores, but later, he displayed people of various ages and professions in the boxes, dressed in clothes that revealed their identities; in his studio, he photographed wounded war veterans or lovers making love in acrylic boxes; and he photographed naked men and women meditating next to a Buddha statue in a temple.

The Museum Project deconstructs the concept of museums, which preserve only the important things by stuffing various everyday human figures into acrylic boxes, and reflects Kim's idea that all beings in the world have their own value.

The ON-AIR Project series, which debuted at the International Center of Photography in New York City in 2006, uses experimental photographic techniques to express his main theme, ‘all beings are born and die,’ and their fragility. The project has three different processes that utilize long exposures, layers, and the properties of ice. The artist explains, "'On-Air' refers to all phenomena in this world, both visible and invisible.

The basic concept of this project is that 'everything that exists disappears'. The series contrasts the nature of photography, which reproduces and records images, with the law of nature, where everything that exists disappears. It is a work that explores the reality of existence in the abstract after the disappearance of realism." 

Among them, On-Air Project 110-7-New York Series (2005) is an 'On-Air' work of New York, a city that symbolizes the gigantic capitalism, which was exposed to a single 8 x 10-inch film for eight hours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 5 Avenue 57 Street in New York. The city was left as an empty street with only a faint red light. Due to the long exposure, fast moving things disappear quickly and slow moving things disappear slowly. The numerous cars and traces of people in the city center of New York have disappeared with such a sense of speed that only faint traces remain.

Utilizing the physical properties of ice to talk about the disappearance of existence, ‘Monologue of ice’ of ON-AIR Project series creates artworks out of solid ice and displays them in museums to capture the process of melting and disappearing. According to Kim, the solidity of ice as a ‘Being’ allows the vaporized gas to be seen as a ‘Non-Being,’ and even after it has vaporized and become invisible, it continues to relate to the atmosphere, becoming rain and snow, a medium that shows that ‘everything is related.’  

Kim spent three months using ice to create a 1/15th of the Parthenon and placed it in the exhibition space. It took about a month for the ice Parthenon to melt. The exhibition hall echoed with the loud, clear sound of ice melting and collapsing, and the work of art dissolved into air and water. Unlike the Parthenon, which was built for "eternity," Kim's ice Parthenon reflects the fate of being that is destined to disappear.

In the Indala series, Kim then superimposed vibrant images of each city so that the objects were completely disembodied and presented as abstractions. The result is a series of approximately 10,000 photographs that paradoxically remain 'empty'. What appears to be empty is actually full, reflecting his idea that all disappearance is based on presence.

Kim then began The Project Drawing of Nature, a project in which he places canvases in various locations and collects them two years later. Kim traveled to Beijing, New York, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Bodhgaya, India, the banks of the Ganges River, and various parts of South Korea, including the DMZ, and the birthplaces of the Cradle of Civilization, and placed approximately 80 canvases in various contexts.

Instead of the artist's brushstrokes, the canvases are left with traces of bacteria, snow, rain, insects, water, and other elements of nature's changing environment. The image left on the canvas becomes a record of the traces of relationships between the myriad beings in the environment, as they subtly influence each other. 

Beginning with the question of existence, Kim has presented his own ontological thoughts through various media such as photography, installation, and performance. As he says, existence is always in the relationship, influencing each other, living and dissolving. In an era of global turmoil marked by various social and environmental issues, such as the climate crisis and wars, Kim's reflections become increasingly meaningful to us.

"Art does not represent the world. It is even less about creating art with complete knowledge of the world. If one fully understood the world, there would be no reason to create art.

This is because in a perfect world, there would be no need for art to exist. Art is about making the invisible visible and obscuring what is seen. Art does not know who it is—that is why art is so dazzling." (Atta Kim, The Butcher’s Aesthetics, 2019, p.409)

Atta Kim was invited to participate in the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, had a solo exhibition at the Rodin Gallery in 2008, and was the first Asian to have a solo exhibition at the International Center for Photography in New York in 2006. In 2002, he was the representative artist of the Korean Pavilion at the 25th Bienal de São Paulo.

In addition to his work, he has published 17 books, and in 2020, he created ‘Art+Parthenon,’ a space for thought and reflection in Yeoju, Gyeonggi-do. His works are in the collections of many museums in Korea and abroad, including The Los Angeles County Museum of Art USA, Hood Museum at Dartmouth College USA, New Britain Museum of American Art USA, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston USA, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul Museum of Art, Busan Museum of Art, Daelim Museum, and Art Sonje Center.

References

• 매일경제, 사진작가 김아타(Atta Kim), `모든 것은 사라진다.`가 담아내는 것, 2017.10.16 :
• 더 아트로, 김아타 (The Artro, Atta Kim) :
• 윤진섭, 프로메테우스 연가(戀歌) : 김아타 
• 국립현대미술관, 김아타 | 온에어 프로젝트 110-7-뉴욕시리즈 | 2005(2010 인화) (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea (MMCA), Atta KIM | ON-AIR Project 110-7-New York Series | 2005) :
  
• 모란미술관, 자연하다 (Moran Museum of Art, ONNATURE) :