The Photography Seoul Museum of Art (Photo SeMA) launches its inaugural special exhibition, THE RADIANCE: BEGINNINGS OF KOREAN ART PHOTOGRAPHY, exploring photography’s journey to establish itself as an art form in Korea. Revisiting Korean photographic history extends beyond merely filling in historical gaps, presenting an attempt to raise new questions about the present through these intervals. Today, photography is not only a genre of art but is constantly being reinterpreted in terms of its social and cultural significance, value, and methods of appreciation. This exhibition responds to these ongoing reinterpretations by shedding new light on how photography established itself as an art form in Korea. The collection and research accumulated over the past decade since the Photo SeMA’s establishment plan was confirmed in 2015, has laid the groundwork for this exhibition. Building upon this body of work, this exhibition seeks to examine how the medium has captured the sensibilities and thoughts of different eras in Korea.
Since the beginning of Korean photography in the 1880s, photography developed beyond mere documentation to become a medium for aesthetic experimentation and conveying messages of social expression. This exhibition demonstrates that these streams of change were never singular, and focuses on the moments that transformed photography from technique to art. These turning points manifest through the diverse practices of five artists: Jung Haechang, Lim Suk Je, Lee Hyungrok, Cho Hyundu, and Park Youngsook. Through these practitioners, the exhibition connects the multilayered developments that Korean photography has established. Their works demonstrate methodologies for reconstructing photography as an artistic language within different eras and sociopolitical conditions. For instance, Jung Haechang’s photographic experiments reveal instances where traditional aesthetic consciousness and Western formal language collide and harmonize during the colonial period, which formally connects to Lee Hyungrok’s later compositional practices, establishing a distinct trajectory in Korean photographic history. These artists have shaped the development of Korean photographic history by influencing each other while conducting critical examinations of the medium, methods of subject representation, and aesthetic experiment across different periods and contexts.
This exhibition does not remain merely a retrospective recreation of past glory. Rather, it presents an investigation of moments not yet fully illuminated and missing points within photographic history, while offering new interpretations of the radiant moments that photography has created. This analysis demonstrates that the formation and development of Korean photographic history is not merely historical fact, but remains a valid aesthetic and social task even today.
Based on such critical practices, the PhotoSeMA aims to establish itself as a public research space that explores the boundaries of photography as a medium and as a cultural hub that facilitates discourse on contemporary image practices. THE RADIANCE: BEGINNINGS OF KOREAN ART PHOTOGRAPHY marks the Photo SeMA’s first step.
