OLDER THAN NAMES

One day, I met a deer on the road. When someone asked if it was a roe deer or a water deer, I slowly shook my head. Only then did I realize that I was familiar with the names but knew nothing about how they differed. I was quite embarrassed. I had never met a roe deer or water deer, yet I firmly believed I knew them. How could that be? Perhaps knowing a name is like covering a mystery with a single word. Over the past 10 years, I have met over 200 water deer. When I first started the water deer portrait project, I thought it would take at most 3-4 years to complete. However, it took a full 10 years to complete about 50 portrait photographs. Even when I was lucky enough to get an opportunity, facing a wild being head-on was never easy. The only thing I could do was wait, wait, and wait some more. Sometimes it took days, sometimes months. Many times, they expressed extreme wariness or anxiety at our first meeting, making photography impossible. There were also cases where I waited for months but they never opened their hearts to me, and I ultimately couldn't photograph them. I composed the portraits of young water deer who had to become independent before they were ready in a graduation album format. The dry, uniform oval frames paradoxically became a device that highlighted their uniqueness. I carefully completed each portrait photograph one by one. Similar but not identical faces. They are all beings invited to this world as unique existences. My heart swelled and ached at their uniqueness. While working on portrait photographs, water deer became more precious to me than exotic creatures like polar bears or albatrosses. I came to love their ancient-looking fangs, their melancholic eyes that seemed to gaze at something endless, their habit of sticking out their peach-colored tongue to make faces, and their timid nature of freezing with one foot raised at the slightest sound. Even the water deer who never opened their hearts to me and thus couldn't leave a single photograph are now shining like stars in my heart. From a distance, they might seem like ordinary deer, but every being has an unfathomable depth. The simple act of lowering our bodies and meeting their eyes allows us to feel the meaning and weight of living, breathing life. Perhaps what we need is just a little time. Time to slowly look into the strange and incomprehensible beings around us. ※ Water deer are our 'endemic species,' 'rare animals,' and 'endangered species' at the same level as cheetahs and koalas, but in our country, they are designated as 'harmful animals' based on crop damage and hundreds of thousands are hunted every year.