RECOLLECTIONS, Soomin Ham's Solo Exhibit: Washington Post Art Review by Mark Jenkins

Soomin Ham's “Wonder,” part of her show “Recollections” at Multiple Exposures Gallery. (Soomin Ham )

March 2, 2024 BY MARK JENKINS

Soomin Ham

It’s not hard to remember numerous recent gallery shows about memory, an increasingly common theme of local artists. But few of them conjured visions of the bygone more inventively than D.C. photographer Soomin Ham, who mixes techniques for both visual and conceptual effect. Ham’s Multiple Exposures Gallery show, “Recollections,” ranges widely in style yet is cohesive emotionally.

Ham, originally from Seoul, sometimes rephotographs existing pictures, or layers soft-focus images through superimposition or by covering them with additional material. One set of three photographs commemorates the loss of her mother, a motif in Ham’s work, by picturing such things as the fabric wrapped about the woman’s ashes and a highway sign for a South Korean cemetery. The photos are in color, which is relatively rare in Ham’s work, but coated with whitish wax to suggest remembrances both psychically and literally out of reach.

Ham often assembles images in doubles or triples. A diptych, “Light for the Fallen,” is split between a black field punctuated by white specks and rows of gravestones rendered in grays so light that they almost vanish into the white background. A single picture fuses three levels: A woman holds a leaf over her face in a rectangular photo that overlaps a horizontal picture of a forest of bare-branched trees. Human and nature almost merge, and yet keep their distance, much like the reveries Ham deftly evokes.

Soomin Ham: Recollections Through March 10 at Multiple Exposures Gallery, Torpedo Factory, 105 N. Union St., Alexandria. multipleexposuresgallery.com. 703-683-2205.