Atta Kim: On-Air / Eighthours

Atta Kim is one of South Korea's best-known photographers. Begun in 2002, his On-Air project, which includes the series After Monologue of Ice and Superimposition, is an exploration of duration and simultaneity through the use of long exposures. This monograph looks at Eight Hours, his third body of work to deploy this conceit, which consists of images taken over a period of eight hours, on eight-by-ten-inch film. Explaining this constraint, Kim said in a 2006 interview, "the length of time that you can photograph with natural light within a day is almost eight hours. And Joseph Nicéphore Niépce used an eight-hour exposure when he made some of the first photographs in the 1820s." Shooting a variety of scenes in New York, China, India, Prague, Berlin and Paris, Kim has used the long exposure time to create haunting, beautiful images of transience inspired by anica, the Buddhist term for the impermanence of existence. Kim's view of New York's Times Square, for instance, reveals a cityscape seemingly vacant of people and cars, in which every moving thing exists as a blurred, almost imperceptible trace.