'What Time Is It in Your World Now?' National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, First Photography Collection Exhibition in 10 Years

200 Landscape and Portrait Paintings, 50 Archive Items Revealed

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art announced on the 26th that it will hold the photography collection exhibition "What's the Time in Your World?" at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, until August 4. This is the first photography collection exhibition by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in 10 years since 2014.

Kwon Do-yeon, 'Bukhansan, Black Mouth', 2019 (printed in 2023), digital inkjet print on paper, 89×133.6cm, ed. 5/5.
[Photo by National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Collection]

Through about 200 landscape and portrait photographs spanning from the 1950s to the 2000s, the exhibition offers a comprehensive view of the realities we live in, including cities, daily life, and historical and social events.

The exhibition title, taken from the 2014 foreign film "What's the Time in Your World?", signifies that just as photographs in the film summon the protagonist to a specific moment in the past, the photographs stored in the museum's collection connect visitors to the landscapes and times within the photos.

Exhibition view of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art 'MMCA Photography Collection Exhibition: What Time Is It in Your World Now?' Photo by Kim Ik-hyun [Photo courtesy of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art]

The exhibition is divided into three parts: ▲The City Approaching Before Your Eyes ▲How to Retrieve Images from Flowing Time ▲What's the Time in Your World?

The first part focuses on the urban landscapes that bear traces of Korea's unique modernization. Through works created from the 1950s to the mid-2010s, it explores cityscapes different from the present and offers a three-dimensional and volumetric perspective of urban scenes that could not be observed through an individual's eyes.

The second part, which focuses on the changing daily lives of individuals over time, infers personal lifestyles and cultures by closely examining various places and everyday objects that make up daily life.

The third part introduces works dealing with domestic and international historical and social events that intersect our lives. It highlights how social and political events that influenced the formation of cities and daily life have transformed the terrain of individual lives in various ways. Visitors can indirectly engage with events they were previously indifferent or unaware of and reconsider their perspectives and attitudes toward these events through the works presented in this section.

Kim Sung-hee, director of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, said, "This exhibition brings together important photographic collections that the museum has steadily collected but that have rarely been seen over the past 10 years." She added, "We hope this serves as an opportunity to confirm the main trends of photography in Korean contemporary art and to continue diverse social and art historical discussions about contemporary photography."