where city meets landscape 26/09/11

I caught the subway in search of the city edge I had seen out the bus window, three weeks ago on my trip to eumseoung. What follows is a photographic study of the edge condition, a meeting between agriculture and city and an experience of city and river.

the city edge, apartments in an abrupt verticality cast shadow over the flat land.

the spare space between apartments and houses, the interweaving of the landscape into the city

polytunnels, the beginnings of industrial agriculture

the vertical threshold, the last few developments

the turned perspective, look one way to city life, the other to village life

urban wetlands, hangang park

Sitting in Handgang park this is where the city ends and the river Han begins its trail inland. Seoul has a similar relationship to the river as it does the green perimeter. The river is the landscape not the city, the public space for the city dwellers to relax and for nature to resume its course. The cities highways pass over, its skyscrapers and apartment blocks drop back from the rivers banks, the river is uncompromised.

As uncompromising as the river are the old men who face out stern and stiff towards the north. The rivers banks give a place to view the city. The vertiginous apartment blocks group together on the horizon. to make the line of cast mountains that sit squat below the rock faced tips of mount bukhansan in the distance. The hierarchy that I found so foreign between the elder and his junior in Korean culture is present between the city and nature. The respect for the land shown in pyonsansowon and soswaewon is in a sense reflected within the urban scale of Seoul. It is sitting here on the south bank of the Han I start to understand the Korean idea of place.