"A director famous for meticulous mise-en-scène takes the opposite road in photography. He stages nothing."

Park Chan-wook has put his name forward as a photographer in Europe for the first time. The exhibition is titled 《Park Chan-wook, par un matin calme》, French for "on a calm morning." The venue is Lee Ufan Arles, in Arles, France. It opened in early July as an official associated program of Les Rencontres d'Arles, the world's largest photography festival, and runs until October 4. It also marks the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Korea and France this year, which puts it in the same context as the opening show of the Ralph Gibson museum in Busan.

Park Chan-wook the director, Park Chan-wook the photographer

Black-and-white portrait of director Park Chan-wook leaning against a wall and looking to the side.
Park Chan-wook, director and photographer. He has kept a camera with him for more than 45 years, since his university days. Image courtesy of Kukje Gallery.

His photography is hard to call a hobby. He has kept a camera with him for more than 45 years, since he studied philosophy at university, and his Instagram, @pcwpcwpic, fills up with photographs instead of film promotion. He has already made his gallery debut, too: his first solo exhibition, 《Your Expression》 (너의 표정), at Kukje Gallery Busan in the fall of 2022, where he hung about 30 works chosen from the photo book of the same name. The Arles show is the next step after that, and his first step onto the European stage.

A director who lets go of directing

A photograph by Park Chan-wook. In front of a seafood market at a harbor, a whale lies on a blue tarp beside a truck loaded with ice, while a man shovels out the ice.
Morning at the harbor: a whale beside an ice truck. The strangeness and unfamiliarity that surface in everyday life only for that one moment. ⓒ Park Chan-wook, courtesy of Kukje Gallery.

In his films, Park Chan-wook is the man who controls everything inside the frame. In front of a photograph, he becomes the opposite. He strips out deliberate staging and takes the everyday moment that caught his eye as it is. Nature, like stones and trees. Traces of industry, like a yellow cable hanging on a wall. Before subjects that change every time with the weather and the light, he catches the beauty, the strangeness and the unfamiliarity that show themselves only in that moment.

Photographs of actors taken on set are also part of the exhibition. These are not tense faces locked into character, but the expressions between takes. Park says they too are part of a natural landscape. The works were selected from his post-digital output together with Valérie Duponchelle, art critic at Le Figaro.

In Lee Ufan's house

A Lee Ufan Arles stone plaque on a faded limestone wall.
Lee Ufan Arles. Tadao Ando reworked the 16th-century mansion Hôtel Vernon, and it opened in 2022.

The venue itself, Lee Ufan Arles, adds to the story. Tadao Ando reworked Hôtel Vernon, a mansion built between the 16th and 18th centuries, and it opened in 2022 as a quiet space where Lee Ufan's stone and steel are placed. The house of a painter who works with empty space now holds the photographs of a director who has stripped away staging. It would be hard to find a place better suited to the title "on a calm morning."

Summary

RELATED 2026 / 7, Photo Exhibitions of the Month Another event marking 140 years of Korea-France relations: we rounded up July's exhibitions, including the Ralph Gibson opening show at the GoEun Gibson Museum of Photography in Busan. →

Sources: official channels of Kukje Gallery, Les Rencontres d'Arles and official material from Lee Ufan Arles. Please check opening hours and closing days on the museum's official channels. If any information changes, we will update this article.