어느 바닷가의 하루

There are so many great silent book artists in so many countries of the world. But  a few countries that really stand out. With an abundance of titles of very high quality, Korea is clearly one of them, and "A day at the beach" is a wonderful example of this.

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In "A day at the beach", we meet a blind fisherman and his dog. The blind fisherman uses a rope line to find his way to the beach, and luckily, he has a very faithful friend in the dog. The love between them becomes obvious already in the first pages, just by the way the dog looks at its owner. The beautiful artwork show us how they work together, until catastrophe happens: The fisherman falls into the sea. In a dream-like sequence the dog jumps in after him, the fisherman turns into a fish, the dog to a rock, there is a body swap: You can spend hours exploring just these few pages for interpretations and stories. In my interpretation, the swap is an illustration of how the two friends are like one - two bodies but sharing so much of each others soul, a feeling I think most dog owners can relate to. The fisherman´s line can be seen as a lifeline, or a line that connect two lives to one another...Regardless of how you interpret this magical sequence, there is a happy ending, the fisherman and the dog walking together, both happy, on their way home, ready for a new day tomorrow.

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The artwork is magnificent. The original version of this book was published as an artists book called "A line", made with linocut and woodcut illustrations in leporello format. The story then consisted of a strip of narrative of almost five meters. This version was, of course, much too expensive for the common market. The hardback version is beautiful, but I find myself wishing the publisher would have kept the leporello format instead of breaking it into ordinary pages - a leporello would work so beautifully with the fluidity of the sea and waves that make the scene for the story.

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Regardless of the format, nothing can take away from the beauty and strength of these illustrations. The artist uses the woodwork so that the lines of the wood becomes the waves of the sea, and it is perfect. The characters are portrayed in a refined, simple style typical for these traditional printing techniques, and the simplicity adds to the expression and story. 

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With "A day at the beach", Author Kim Su-Yeon has won several well-deserved prestigious awards. ​​​