For the past decade, the artist Myoung Ho Lee has been wandering around his native South Korea, shooting trees like some kind of arboreal Avedon, in stark relief against a plain white canvas. His pictures possess the glamour and focus of studio portraits, yet they’re set in the landscape — be it a golden meadow or a cloudy blue sky dotted with balloons. It’s a deceptively simple trick, a way of foregrounding what would ordinarily be background. The purity of the final image belies the incredibly complicated rigging that makes it possible — a process that usually involves industrial cranes, ropes and numerous artisans. Lee, 37, retouches the photographs to erase any trace of his own hand. “If the mechanics of the artwork were visible, it would be easier for people to recognize the scale and the method,” he said. “But I want to hide them, to infuse a magical and vague aspect to my work, so that viewers may question and try to find answers themselves.”