Atop the highest mountain

Photographer Ahn Seung-il, who specialises in lofty peaks, has always believed that Mount Baekdusan “holds the soul” of the Korean people. The mountain, straddling North Korea and China, is the starting point of the backbone of the Korean Mountains. It has long been regarded as a sacred place for Koreans. Legends surrounding the nation’s founding originate from the mountain and its vicinity.
Ahn also believes he deserves the rank of “best photographer” when it comes to this mountain. With many years’ experience photographing peaks in South Korea, he ventured up Mount Baekdusan 20 years ago.
Gazing from the summit on its Chinese side, he imagined entering North Korea, but it was inaccessible to him. In 1995, though, he summoned the courage to set foot on the forbidden side. He wrote a letter to North Korea’s then-leader Kim Il-sung, grandfather of current leader Kim Jong-un, asking for an invitation to the North Korean face of the mountain.
“I didn’t like the situation when foreign photographers got passes to enter North Korea to photograph Mount Baekdusan while South Koreans were barred from going in there,” Ahn said at a solo exhibition of his Baekdusan photos in Seoul last month.
He wrote in the letter: “Dear Brother Kim Il-sung. If you need photos of Mount Baekdusan, don’t let Japanese or foreigners take pictures. Let me do so. Photos are not something done only with photography skills. They should contain the soul [of the object]. It should have the pulse of the Korean nation.”
He delivered the letter to the North Korean Embassy in China.
He managed to display his Mount Baekdusan pictures to North Koreans twice through exhibitions held in Pyongyang with North Korean and Japanese photographers. “When political exchanges were almost non-existent, we had a few in the field of photography,” he said.
With the Seoul show, Ahn has exhibited the entire collection of photos he’s taken over 20 years on Mount Baekdusan. The exhibition features some 140 shots, including those that have been on view in North Korea.
Asked if that’s all he took for two decades, he said, “If you get five shots a year, you’ve done your best at the whims of the weather.” Ahn’s spectacular images are the result of good weather and light, as well as patience. He spent eight months on the mountain, alone, and the other four months with his family in Seoul.
But he wasn’t always lucky. One time he spent 20 days waiting in a tent in harsh, cold weather – only to descend without a single shot. “I had to wait for the right moment to come. A good picture requires being in the right place at the right time.”
In order to take that perfect shot, Ahn needed to discover new spots and gain permission to access them. Many of the areas on Mount Baekdusan are off-limits due to safety and conservation concerns.
Ahn gained his access by building relationships with the Chinese mountaineers through guanxi, the Chinese term for a certain approach to doing business. Although it had been time-consuming, the personal network he established took him to unexplored areas, which helped him reveal unknown scenes of Baekdusan.
He took various shots of the famous Cheonji Lake from points on the surrounding peaks. The photos he got were far from the conventional frontal shots of the lake taken on a clear day.
His photos are printed on large canvases for the exhibition. One takes up the entire two storeys of the exhibition hall. Ahn believed a large size better delivers the feeling he had at the scene.
“On other mountains, when the clouds and fog clear, you start to shoot immediately. But not on Mount Baekdusan – here you forget to press the shutter release. It’s that breathtaking!”

LACE UP YOUR CLIMBING BOOTS
Ahn Seung-il’s exhibition runs until February 18 at the Ara Art Centre in Insa-dong, Jongno, Seoul.
For more information, check out www.AraArt.co.kr.