THE KUKMIN DAILY

The father with prostate cancer said to his son: “I want to see the light.” The room was not dark, and the son wasn’t sure what his father really wanted. But he wanted to help his father with whatever he could. So the son took a photograph of the window that was full of sunshine and showed it to his father. What the father saw in his son’s photo, however, was not the light. He saw the cross-shaped window frame in the photo. The faithful father rejoiced when he found the cross, the presence of God, in his son’s photo.

A month later, the father passed away. It was June 2012. He was embracing a wooden cross at that time. The son felt as if his father’s will was for him to live a life of the cross. Since then, the son has taken photographs of crosses, traveling all over the country. He has shot the shapes of crosses on the street and of those hiding inside buildings, not those atop spires or outside church buildings. He is Gweon San (43·photo), a professional cross photographer. His real name is Gweon O-il, but he uses “San (mountain)” as his artist name because he likes mountains, which embrace diverse lives.

On July 29, I went to Exit 4 of the Express Bus Terminal station on Seoul Metro Line 7 to meet with Mr. Gweon. The temperature was over 30 degrees Celsius, the paved road was blazing, and cars were whizzing by. This was the place he had chosen to photograph crosses on this day. He walked for a kilometer with the camera in his hand. His other self DSLR camera looked as heavy as a brick.

“Do you come out and take photographs everyday even when it’s hot like this? Where do you find crosses around here?”

“I go to work when God goes to work, and when God takes off I take off (smiles). Sunshine is my lighting equipment and nature is my studio. Crosses are here and there around us. Can you see over there?” He pointed to an ordinary manhole cover. He took a photo. Surprisingly, the LCD clearly showed a cross, part of the design pattern on the manhole cover (photo ①).

He walked a few more steps and pointed his camera, this time at the tactile paving installed for visually impaired pedestrians. Sophora blossoms had fallen between the truncated bar patterns in the form of a cross (photo ②), as if someone had decorated it just for him. He found another cross in the ivy-covered soundproofed wall next to the street (photo ③). He appeared heedless of the steamer-like heat. Sweat was pouring off him like rain, but he kept his focus on the photography.

“Very often, a cross is hiding in places we consider beneath notice, like the pedestrian path for the visually impaired. People step on the fallen flowers as they pass by… Isn’t it meaningful to find a cross there?”

The interview continued as we moved to his church, Yeongil Church in Seochogu. 15 of his various cross photographs were displayed in the church corridor. They included a cross from a chicken farm (photo ④), a ribbon of flame shaped like a person in prayer silhouetted against a cross, found in a bonfire (photo ⑤), and so on.

“Sometimes I walk 10km a day while taking photographs. I take more than 500 photos of crosses every day. When I go home I save only those I really like. Nevertheless, I now have more than 10,000 photos.”

Gweon neither majored in photography, nor won any awards in photo competitions. Upon graduation from high school, he went straight into the army. After his military service he joined a design company. At one time, he operated a company manufacturing Christian ornaments and picture frames. He had lived a life that had nothing to do with photography, until he began taking photos after his father passed away. He became famous quickly, and has held several exhibitions. He earns a living by giving photography lectures once in a while. “One time I thought about making my photos into postcards to sell. But then I changed my mind, because maybe then I would look for crosses just for the money. I don’t want to be someone who sells the cross.”

On our way to Yeongil Church, Gweon lay down flat on the pedestrian road, next to a smelly drain. He pointed his camera at the grill covering the drain, his favorite subject for cross photographs (photo ⑥). “When I find a cross in a place like this, I feel like I’ve met Jesus,” he said. “Didn’t he suffer in the lowest place of the world?”

"I’ll take photos of crosses until I die, as a way of growing my spirituality, not my fame. (*Translator’s note: the Korean words for “spirituality” and “fame” rhyme.) I hope believers will realize that the cross is always alive around us and that God is always with us. The cross is always with all the persons in this world.”

Reporter Park Ji Hun (lucidfall@kmib.co.kr), with Yeara Ahn-Park (yap@kmib.co.kr)

Photos by senior reporter Kang Min Seok


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