Director Park Chan-wook to Hold Photo Exhibition

Park Chan-wook's 'Face 16'. (Photo by International Gallery)

[Asia Economy Reporter Donghyun Choi] "Perhaps whether it is a landscape or a still life, I might be taking every object as if photographing a portrait. It captures the subject's identity, personality, life journey, current mood, and expression. This is how I communicate with all things in the world." (Director Park Chan-wook)

Director Park Chan-wook will hold a photo exhibition titled 'Your Faces' at the International Gallery Busan branch from October 1 to December 19. During the making of the 2016 film 'The Handmaiden,' Park Chan-wook compiled photos he took on set into a photo book called 'Close to The Handmaiden.' At the entrance of the Park Chan-wook Hall in the Yongsan CGV Art House in Seoul, which opened in 2017, six photos are replaced every four months under the title 'Pantheism,' gradually revealing his photographic works. This is Park Chan-wook's first solo gallery exhibition. About 30 selected works from the photo book of the same name, published around the same time, are featured.

Known as a film director who thoroughly plans before actual shooting, photography provides Park Chan-wook with a medium to communicate with the world in a completely different way from film. He distances his photography from the destiny of film, where even the most natural-looking moments must be artificially designed and arranged. The artist himself describes his photography work as an 'antidote' to his meticulously detailed film work, with chance and spontaneity playing a significant role in his photos.

Director Park Chan-wook.

Park Chan-wook consistently encourages us to reconsider our standards of beauty. Even the most ordinary scenes inevitably carry different impressions at every moment, and by looking at photos that capture moments of light and wind, viewers discover unfamiliar expressions in familiar objects. As a commercial film director who has keenly honed his sense of capturing the spirit of the times in his works, Park Chan-wook provides clues for us today to actively and subjectively expand unexpected beauty within the familiar landscapes around us.

The exhibition introduction states: "Whether the subject is a landscape, a still life, or even debris without a specific name, Park Chan-wook finds the 'pupil' of the subject. By making eye contact, he reads the expression of the subject. He finds beauty in subjects that do not seek to be beautiful, questioning the category of aesthetics. For photographer Park Chan-wook, photogenic beauty is a delicate yet resolute order that is hidden in the shadow of dominant value systems or conventional aesthetics but can be discovered by pausing briefly and respecting the phenomenon itself through the power of the camera."