Twinkle Twinkle — Photographer Kwon Doyeon's City of Wild Encounters

An eye-to-eye encounter with beings adapting to survive within the city's altered ecosystem.

Words & Photos * Kwon Doyeon
In collaboration with Perigee Gallery
* Kwon Doyeon has been photographing wild animals within cityscapes through her series “Bukhansan,” “Night Journey,” and now “Twinkle Twinkle.” Her other works include “SF,” “Flash Memory,” “Archaeology,” and “Dictionary of Concepts,” and she has taken part in numerous group exhibitions at venues such as the FotoFest Biennial in the United States, Incheon Art Platform, the Seoul Museum of Art, and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. Kwon Doyeon's solo exhibition “Twinkle Twinkle” was held at Perigee Gallery from October 6 to November 25, 2023.

For moonlight to reach the river, it has to press close against the pillars of the cold Haengju Bridge stretching across the sky, coming straight down rather than drifting elsewhere. The moonlight pours down through the willows, over the head of a leopard cat keeping watch on the water's edge. It pours down on a raccoon dog dozing on the concrete embankment, on the back of a water deer sitting in the underbrush with its nose lifted to the sky about to begin its call, and on an otter swimming across the current.

At the southern end of Haengju Bridge, a clover-shaped interchange forms where Olympic-daero, Haengju Bridge, the road toward the Incheon metropolitan landfill, and Gongang-ro all meet. Inside the ramp loops that accommodate the turning radius of vehicles sits a circular patch of designated green space. There, a small forest grows. Despite the heavy traffic noise and dust, no people ever entered, and the dense willows made it an appealing refuge for wildlife living in the city. This little forest lured wild animals the way a streetlamp lures moths. But making use of it came at a steep price: to enter or leave the green space, the animals had to cross the roads surrounding it on every side. On these roads, the deaths of water deer, raccoon dogs, otters, and leopard cats were observed again and again. Though clearly an attractive habitat, this forest had become an ecological trap instead, functioning as a black hole that drew in the local wildlife population.

Whenever the morning star rose, I headed there. Acacia trees grew abundantly in that place. In early summer, their scent seemed to cleanse the very air. Breathing deeply, I could feel the edges of my lungs go faintly cold. It was while walking slowly along the river beneath Haengju Bridge, breathing in that scent, that I met Buni. Buni loved this place. Climbing the fan-shaped concrete embankment that opened toward the Han River, there stood cherry trees, lit as if by a spotlight from a nearby streetlamp. Come spring, the cherry tree beside the streetlamp was always the first to bloom. On nights when the blossoms began to fall, the drifting petals shimmered silvery white. From Buni's home, that whole scene was visible. Buni spent the daylight hours there, then at dusk crossed Olympic Bridge to forage in the Gangseo wetlands, returning across Olympic-daero to the green space before dawn. Buni crossed Olympic-daero — a road littered with the remains of so many roadkill victims — without hesitation.

Buni was gentle. It seemed to understand human body language quite well. Every time I photographed Buni, I felt a sense of closeness, and that made me happy. Without ever being told to hold still for a photograph, it would settle into perfect stillness, fully prepared to become the past. Where the light wasn't enough, the flash would occasionally go off. Photographs cut our present moment out of time. When I set off the flash, the scenery would flare white. Sometimes what remained was so faint it seemed as though it might vanish at any second. And those cut-out moments touched something deep inside my chest, like a small stab. But Buni's ordinary routine, moving between Haengju Bridge and the Gangseo wetlands, did not last long. The so-called Great Han River Project began — a plan to connect the Han River and the Arawaterway by cruise ship. The once-quiet forest beneath Haengju Bridge was upended in an instant. Construction equipment moved in, and as work began to dredge the riverbed, black earth buried the small forest. Within just a few days, the forest was gone. And Buni was gone too.

This summer was hotter than most. Walking along the river on a summer night, you sometimes come across a spot with an unusually cool current of air, where warm and cold air mingle. For two years, in search of Buni, I walked through this forest and felt those shifts in the air. I loved, with my whole body, this delicate and dynamic place where life and death — half submerged, half exposed — dissolved into one another. I tried to get a little closer to their lives, but in the end there was still far more I didn't understand than what I had learned.
When September came, grass grew thick across the field covered in black earth. I sat down among it, the way Buni used to. Buni might pass right by without recognizing me. I stood again and looked out at the horizon. Every time the wind blew, the field trembled faintly. The lush grass rubbed against itself, making a soft sound, and a dry ripple spread in the direction of the wind. From which direction would Buni come? I turned slowly, changing my position, and kept watching the horizon. At a moment when everything seemed to be disappearing, I needed something like a twinkling light dividing the darkness along the horizon — some kind of sign that said, there, it's still there — something beautiful. Perhaps what we need isn't a record, but simple awe at the fact of existence.