Boomoon

Came across Boomoon in Chapter 3 of "The Photograph as Contemporary Art". His website contains a lot of photographs across a significant number of series - is it his complete published work?

It's interesting to see how his work developed from his street photography of the 70's into the Deadpan style which brought him to my attention.

I was most intrigued by his series "To the stones" which are basically photographs of large stones or rocks which he's come across on his travels. He refers to them as portraits. They taken at eye-level in what looks like mid-day light. They are unsentimental to the point of being bold. And interestingly the stones are very much at the centre of the shot - which is what I think the site refers to as "plays with the risk of item-centrism".

In the shot below the stone forms a central point. I think the positioning of the horizon helps to keep the composition interesting (Boomoon treats the positioning of the horizon as a subject in other series - I guess this goes back to the explicit focus on perspective which I read that Struth shows). The snow on the side of the stone and the subtle highlights in the sky also add interest and keep the image gelled together.

The photograph below has a subdued blue tone. The position of the  horizon is again important. The cloud provides a nice counterpoint to the stone - it somehow equals it's weight.

In this photograph there are a number of diagonal lines pointing to the centre.

In another series - Naksan 2010 - he photographs the sea with the snow pelting down at 45 degrees. The photographs are decidedly similar in nature. They are neutral in tone and relatively low contrast. They contain no obviously emotive content - just the sea. They're taken in the vertical (another deliberate point to the fact that these are photographs. But the part of the frame below the top square is completely devoid of detail - when viewed on a white web page it looks like part of the page. His website says that snowy shore bonds the viewer to the scene. He then quotes the poet Shino Kuraishi with words which seem to relate very much to the Deadpan aesthetic - "The shore may be a stage but it is entirely anti-theatrical. It has nothing to do with spectacle, of a type that would satisfy the visual desires of the general public. Rather it is as if the stage was built for one beholder alone. These are photographs for a quiet dialogue with oneself." Within the text he refers to the viewer as photographer-beholder. This is photography which narrates on the experience of viewing photographs and in turn the experience of viewing the world (I think?!)