Art, Nature, Photography

30\10\2014
Written by Daan Rombaut



These portraits are slowly being devoured by living fungi

Seung-Hwan Oh 1

A few years ago, South Korean artist Seung-Hwan Oh noticed something strange was happening with his photo paper: fungi were slowly but surely harming his photos. It would only be a matter of time before the picture would become totally unrecognizable … and useless. Or not? Instead of doing everything in his power to keep the fungi away from his photos, he decided to embrace the parasites and let them go their way without restraint. Ever since, the artist has created a series of these photos, under the title ‘Impermanence’. He places the images in a warm, moist environment in which the fungi thrive and consume the light sensitive chemicals for months or even years. Seung-Hwan has also started breeding parasites himself in a micro fungi farm, although molds found on old bread or rice do the job as well. Nevertheless, letting nature run its course doesn’t always yield results: “To put thing in perspective, only one out of 500 frames of medium format color reversal film comes out properly and I only have 15 of them so far since I started the project in 2010.” – Seung-Hwan Oh

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