Exploring Sumi-E

Krister Berg

Krister Berg lives in Sweden and has been photographing since the 1980s. He is an elected member of Naturfotograferna/N, and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency named him Nature Photographer of the Year 2023.

instagram.com

It's exciting to ask oneself how few lines, surfaces, or objects are needed for something to become a photograph. Is a single line enough? A point? Where is the boundary? And how much can a subject be reduced? Would it still be a photograph if I only captured a white surface? Yes, perhaps in a strict sense, but hardly meaningful. Something more is required.

My interest in these questions began with an image I took in 2018. I saw something different, something I couldn't quite put my finger on. I tried to replicate the idea in the following winters without success. It's very difficult to capture the conditions needed for such images. However, I continued to explore the theme over several winters and dove deep into the art world to find what had inspired me.

Exploring Sumi-E

An art form that has spent centuries exploring the question of how little is needed to create an image is the Zen Buddhist Japanese/Chinese Sumi-e tradition. Here, we often find delicate ink paintings that seem to float in the air. They appear temporary, short-lived, and random in their fragility. We've all seen these images—spindly bamboo leaves and silhouettes of mountains and trees against an eternal white sky.