∴Damas Dairies - Muju∴
A South Korean Photo Road-Trip
I’d planned on two days of shooting and camping when I traveled south through Seoul and into Korea’s western plains this holiday season. Two days would be enough to find a few unique, out-of-the-way locations, and to film the whole thing for YouTube. Tight, but enough. It was at the 7-hour mark of a “3-hour” drive that my hope began to fade of doing anything on that first day other than driving and balancing apple cores on my dash. So it was that I pulled in to the lake country of Muju, in golden early evening light, and with zero quality footage to my name.
I tried to get as close to the lake as possible, and found my way down a chewed up path into a field of wild flowers. My little white van, in its Korean iteration known as a Daewoo Damas, stood a beacon in the petals, with only a rusted-out digger for company. I was gassed, and decided against dinking around with my video camera for the last light of the day. Instead, after getting my mattress out and bags in order, I scouted the basin where I’d parked.
The stipple of flower-colour topped the late-summer green of the stems. On the walk I noticed a man out front of his boxy little house. I went over and introduced myself, asking if it was alright for me to sleep in the flowers that night. “In the car?” he smiled. “Is it long enough?” He gave me his blessing and I set about dinner, cooking on a gas-burner as I watched the mountains go grey and purple.
Day 1 of 1
I awoke to some lake fog hanging on the air and got to work filming. Shooting video of yourself shooting photos, yourself, is awkward. While I’m usually fairly certain I’m in focus, and in frame, and I have clean audio running, and my clothes aren’t sitting weirdly, there’s not much guarantee. Still, I got to work walking the overgrown concrete slabs that counted for roads, looking for photos.
To be more accurate, my approach is to try and be sensitive to what might make an image. I pay attention to what I notice, and then wonder why I noticed it. I keep in the frame all the things that seem relevant to that, and the rest I frame out if I can. Many of the things I notice tend to share qualities. Those qualities can be practical (colour, isolation) or they can be a bit more ephemeral (passing of time, or sense of belonging, for instance). The intensity of the colours was rising with the sun, and after an hour of photographing I was ready to get driving again.
A Village, Waist-High
I hadn’t been driving for too long before I turned off into a small village. There were maybe two-dozen homesteads, some patches of farmed land, and the arched vinyl of a few little greenhouses. There’s an odd mix of charm and anonymity about this kind of place. Many of the people that live among the abandoned houses are old and self-sufficient. There’s typically a hush in the roads, which are made more for the shuffling of feet than for cars. Even if I wasn’t this tall, I could still see over the fences. I think there’s a lot to photograph in these areas, and I toy now and then with the idea of doing a project away from Seoul and in these little villages. They bear the marks of time passing. This can be confused for being places of nostalgia, but that’s not what I’m drawn to. Rather than photographing what exists now and trying to make it look out of the past, I’m interested in showing how aging places look now. I’ve been to a few of these villages, but I haven’t worked there in a focused way…yet. I have a few other photo projects on the go that I’m dedicating my attention to first. But I want to give some time to exploring more villages, to see what might be possible there.
It was getting toward noon and I’d finished filming in the village. I packed my gear back in the car and started driving the roads that twisted away from any populous areas. I had designs on a river that snaked into the mountains but the road was closed and guarded, so I doubled back onto some smaller paths. The tar turned to concrete, which in turn became dirt as I wound my way along a mountain. A small clearing like the top of a thermometer appeared and that was where I parked, near a small waterfall and some stacked rocks in the Buddhist fashion. I’d come across the entrance to a temple.
It’s Easy to Disregard Temples
They’re synonymous with tourism, and tourism is not exactly the poster-child for authentic experience. But a far-out temple with no clear signage on the road, and with no public transport access, that kind of temple seems more likely to have a believable beauty.
At the base of the hill where I’d parked, water was flowing toward house-sized boulders with handmade engravings. I filmed here as I photographed, going up and down the mossy slopes to change angles and batteries. After getting it developed, I realized film is not perfectly suited to this kind of setting. The low contrast in the shade, along with the indistinct colours in the rocks, didn’t resolve the engravings as clearly as I saw them in person. A handful came out satisfyingly, but I’ll change my approach the next time I’m in a similar situation.
After getting the life scared out of me by an old timer who exploded out of the woods, I followed him up the path toward the temple. It was small, but for its spot on a shelf overlooking the valley, surrounded by mountains and flowers, it had to be one of the prettiest in Korea. In the courtyard stood a single tree that seemed about to bloom, despite the lateness of the season. The old man was in conversation with a monk by the time I got there. Once he left, the monk and I shared a few words in Korean, she gave me permission to look around and I set to photographing. Temples don’t typically have the imagery I’m after in my personal work, but for anyone who might be watching the video, they might see a side of Korea that’s a little new to them.
I was working my way around the side of the temple when the monk stepped out of her room and onto a wooden platform, carrying a tray. I went over and she offered it to me, a plate of rice cakes traditional for the season, and a glass of cold plum juice. It was such a sweet surprise, and I felt a deep sense of welcome. She pointed me to a table and I took a break to finally eat a bit.
Back down at the car, I got everything in order and headed out, filming a few cut-aways of me driving around the winding roads. The sun was sliding and I needed to find a place to camp. Earlier in the day I’d passed a sharp bend off a main stretch of road that sank into some trees. I found my way back there and crept down the slope, not trusting my brakes and wanting to soften the blows of the branches on my windscreen. I broke out at the base of the hill onto an overgrown and abandoned road. This was the spot I’d be camping for the night. Walking its length I could tell pretty quickly that it was too torn up to drive. The tar was cracked and chips of it lay scattered among the weeds that had sprung up in the gaps. Returning to the car, I filmed the last of the footage I needed and set up camp. I was a little hazy from having compressed two days of filming into one, but I think it all worked out. That night I drank tea as the rain and fog seeped down into the valley. Camping affords a bit of time to think, and I considered the things that had been made clear by the trip.
You feel alive when you go somewhere new
Aim for the things you do not know
There’s a project in the villages
Leave earlier next time
For more photos, go here. For the video, here.
Do you do photo projects while you travel? Let me know about it in the comments.
