Bae Bien-U: Sacred Wood

With his meditative landscape photographs, which have an almost calligraphic quality, Seoul-based Bae Bien-U is one of Korea's best known artists, and has influenced a generation of photographers during his many years of teaching. He first rose to prominence in his country with his series--ongoing for the past two decades--depicting pine groves, which are plentiful, as the pine is Korea's national tree, representing longevity. Beginning with a selection of images taken near Gyeongju's Silla Dynasty burial mounds, this stunning large-format volume assembles images from the entire series, which were shot exclusively in natural light, both day and night. Natural effects like fog and filtered sunlight add to the expressionistic quality of the images, which recall Western Romanticism but reflect a characteristically Korean visual vocabulary. This volume is published concurrently with an exhibition at London's Phillips de Pury & Company.