Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 2, 1994 TAG: 9411230071
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Medium-sized cities in green valleys, flanked by craggy mountains.
In one of the photographs in Wonju photographer Won Jong Ho new exhibit at Virginia Western Community College, there is even a dogwood tree. At least, it looks like a dogwood tree.
Of course, Wonju is not Roanoke.
To put the difference in a nutshell, perhaps you need an artist's heart.
"It looks similar," Won said recently of Roanoke, "but there is a totally different atmosphere or feeling."
Back in Wonju, said Won, there came a time early each morning when the artist in him needed to leave his house, go outside and smell the good earth.
Here, that time never comes.
Understand, he's not knocking Roanoke. On the contrary:
"Maybe it's so perfect, there's no feeling for me," said Won, who is visiting the United States for the first time.
The Wonju photographer and feed store owner came to Roanoke this month to help install an exhibit of his photographs of Wonju. He spoke through an interpreter.
Won's exhibit, which is located upstairs in the school's new humanities building, is open to the public. It runs through Nov. 15.
"I think his work is partly about strong contrasts you feel between the light and the dark," said David Curtis, an art professor at the college.
Curtis spent 90 days in Wonju in 1993 as part of an exchange program with Sang Ji Junior College. It was he who met Won and arranged to bring him here.
Curtis also spoke of the brilliant color of many of Won's photographs.
Won's photographs are for sale - for $175 apiece. Curtis thinks that's cheap.
Won, an award-winning photographer in his native country, has a permanent exhibition of 25 works in the information office of Chiak Mountain National Park. He lists among his influences American photographers Ansel Adams and Minor White.
He is a Korean mountaineer who says his photographs are poems written with mountains, trees and sky. Back home, Won spends much of his time prowling the mountains around Wonju.
His pictures may combine bright color and deep shadows.
Often, sunlight will single out a ridgetop or forest opening in one of Won's photographs, or a splash of color will appear amidst a darker background.
Won says the bursts of light and color spell "hope."
A feed store owner with a wife and two children, Won originally studied at Kwang Dong University to become a painter.
Upon entering the working world, however, he found he didn't have time to do his painting justice. He took a photography class, believing that photography would be easier than painting.
"But actually it's not,'' he said. "Painting, it's much easier, because you can go back and repaint it. With photography you are capturing the moment."
So Won stalks his moment.
He begins, he said, with a picture in mind, and then sets out to find it. He may visit a single spot 10 or 20 times, seeking just the right light.
His finished photographs all say something, at least to Won. A grove of hazy tree trunks before a sunny clearing is warm anticipation - the feeling that "something good is coming your way, but you can't quite grasp it," he said.
And a mountain stream in sunlight is an invitation to "become one with nature - to get in and splash around."
Almost uncannily sometimes, the photographs resemble the Roanoke Valley - especially the mountains that envelop it. In some of the photographs, Wonju may be seen from the perspective of a ridgetop, its high-rise apartment clusters like ivory in the folds of a green blanket.
Wonju, which Curtis said is an easy drive from the South Korean capital, Seoul, contains about 170,000 people.
To Won, meanwhile, America seems "picture perfect."
Perhaps too perfect.
"Everything is so abundant," Won explained. "We are surrounded [here in Roanoke] by so many beautiful things that you don't feel it. Everything is here. You don't have to go and fight to get it."
Won planned to remain in Roanoke several days, then leave late last week to visit Washington, D.C., New York City, Miami and San Francisco, before heading home.
Won Jong Ho: ``Photographs. Images of Wonju, Korea'' through Nov. 15 in the Art Gallery of the Humanities Building, Virginia Western Community College, Roanoke.
by CNB