"Holding on to what is disappearing. Laying out this month's exhibitions, we kept reading that line into all of them."
August's photo exhibitions share a face. Places that are disappearing, communities being erased, memories being forgotten. Gwangyang hosts a centennial retrospective of a photographer who documented a century, while Seoul and Sejong each have a show that follows abandoned houses in redevelopment zones and the stories left behind. Around them, international photo festivals in Busan and Incheon fill out the summer. We start with what closes soonest.
Closing this week
9th Incheon Open Port International Photo Festival, 〈Beyond the Tide〉
Incheon Open Port area (Korea-China Cultural Center, Overseas Chinese History Museum, Sangsang Platform, Gwandong Gallery and others). 7.25 – 8.5.
An international photo festival that starts from Incheon's identity as a port city and widens out to the climate crisis, ocean pollution and biodiversity. The stage is the whole Open Port district, not a single venue. You see it on foot among early modern buildings, so we suggest arriving late in the afternoon and walking until sunset.
Gil Fine Art, 〈RE-Image: The Alchemy of Photography〉 (사진의 연금술)
Seongnam Arts Center Gallery 808. 7.31 – 8.7.
A contemporary fine art photography show that takes the photograph off the flat image and into the physicality of the print, into objects and installation. It asks "what is a photograph?" again, outside the paper.
Kim Gi-chang, 〈The Surface of Time〉
BRT Small Art Museum (Sejong). 7.29 – 8.9.
Black-and-white records of abandoned houses and long-used objects in redevelopment zones. A patch where the wallpaper was torn away, a doorknob worn by hands. The surfaces that remain after the people have gone speak for the time.
Through next week
3rd Documentary Photo Festival, 〈That Place, the Stories Left Behind〉
Space22 (Seoul). 7.24 – 8.14.
Five photographers, Park Jong-myeon, Byeon Seong-jin, Lee Dong-geun, Lee Jae-gap and Jang Young-jin, document places and communities that are disappearing. It is an honest look at what documentary photography has long done. Lee Jae-gap's name comes up again further down this list. Seen alongside his solo show in Daegu, it shows two sides of one photographer.
23rd Photo Criticism Award creative prize exhibition: Kim Hyun-seok and Lee Jae-gyun
Gonggan Pulsup (Seoul). 8.4 – 8.14.
Kim Hyun-seok works on cities changed by development, Lee Jae-gyun on war and historical memory. The prize exhibition of these two emerging photographers opens today.
10th Busan International Photo Festival, 〈People 人〉
Busan Port International Exhibition & Convention Center · Sasang Indie Station. 7.29 – 8.18.
The tenth edition. A large international festival gathering work by Korean and international photographers on the theme of people and their times. It is split across two venues, so give yourself plenty of time. Since you are making the trip to Busan, add the GoEun Gibson Museum of Photography in Haeundae (a permanent Ralph Gibson display) and you have a full day.
Running through August
Lee Jae-gap, 〈CORNER〉
Artspace Lumos (Daegu). 7.28 – 8.22.
A photographer who has spent years on social documentary turns the camera on himself. New work that moves from record to memory, from the outside world to the inner one. See it together with the Documentary Photo Festival above and it becomes clear where he stands now.
Lee Kyung-mo's Gaze, 〈Facing Disappearance, Leaving It in Photographs〉
Gwangyang Culture and Arts Center, Galleries 1 and 2. 8.1 – 8.31.
An exhibition marking the 100th anniversary of Lee Kyung-mo's birth. Documentary photographs of the upheavals of modern Korean history and the lives of the people who lived through them. A man born a hundred years ago, and the photographs he left, seen a hundred years later. Of everything this month, these pictures have crossed the most time. Open all through August.
Thierry Ardouin, 〈Seed Stories〉
GoEun Museum of Photography (Busan). 4.23 – 8.30.
Seeds collected from around the world, photographed through a microscope and each set up like a portrait. 87 works in all. Seeds smaller than a fingernail look like sculptures in the frame. The show opened in spring and runs to the end of summer, so it pairs well with the Busan International Photo Festival on the same day.
Route notes
In Seoul, Space22 (8.14) and Gonggan Pulsup (8.14) close on the same day. Both lean documentary, so seeing them in one day keeps a steady thread. In Busan, combine the festival (8.18) with the GoEun Museum of Photography (8.30). Daegu has just Lumos, but it runs until August 22, so there is time. The Incheon Open Port festival runs until August 5, which makes tomorrow the last day.
Look at the list again and most of these shows are about things that are disappearing. Neighborhoods lost to redevelopment, communities being forgotten, faces from a hundred years ago, seeds the size of a fingernail. Side by side, August's exhibitions say the same thing: photography, in the end, is about keeping.
