Koo Bohnchang, ‘Soap’ series, 2004-2007 © Koo Bohnchang

Washing soap with water, an early spring evening. -Hoganshi (方眼子)

Water melts soap and creates a lather with which to wash away dirt from the human body. Sometimes it creates the poetic form of a bubble, but the central fact to soap is that it never ceases to disappear.

It’s surprising, then, that one rarely witnesses a soap bar’s end. Worn down by use, or dropped accidentally down the drain, or melded to a new bar, it simply disappears. Nobody notices it happen. To become bubbles and be washed away is, after all, the work of soap.

Soap and stone bear a certain resemblance. But if a stone can be likened to an hermit philosopher, then soap is a faceless worker.
A tool takes on a sheen and character when used every day, turning into a great artist or artisan, or a stubborn old man.
Soap, however, is different. Its concrete expression is its effervescent spheres.

Its way of living is its way of dying – man and his object both are washed away. Flowers and clouds are beautiful, and so too man-made objects such as spoons and bridges. But of all the beautiful things in the world, why would a photographer choose soap as the subject of his vision?

The reason lies in the deep connection between soap’s existence and photography’s nature. Photographs do not capture the past or the present as we know them, nor do they reproduce something that doesn’t exist. They only trap what is front of one’s eyes in the present. They do so as all things, including ourselves, are continually in the midst of disappearing.

The work of the photographer is to reveal each moment as it disappears. This is where the work of soap and the work of the photographer meet. Koo Bohnchang has discovered the jewel-like beauty of everyday soap.

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