Fifty-five stories by a photographer

Jeeyoun Kim began taking photographs in her early 50s, and then published a book of prose, rather than photographs, in her 70s. ‘I struggled through middle age. When I turned fifty, I finally found photography’, she wrote in her autobiography, Life in the Fog.

In various solo exhibitions including ‘Rice Mill,’ ‘I Go to the Barber Shop,’ ‘Mokdong,’ and ‘Old Room,’, she showed photographs of everyday scenes, such as a dilapidated room guarded by an old woman, a grave surrounded by a basalt stone walls with Jeju Island in the background, a barber shop and sign with a few letters missing, and rice mills with dark green roofs. What did the photographer want to convey through these seemingly old and unremarkable objects? Perhaps, as Kim’s other job title, ‘archivist,’ suggests, it was her desire to document what is disappearing so that what she calls ‘nostalgic signs of memory’ could be passed on to the next generation.

Kyenam Jungmiso (Community Museum)

Kim currently runs the Kyenam Jungmiso of community museum. This transformed  Rice Mill is now a village cultural community space in Jinan, Jeollabuk-do. At Seohakdong Sajin-gwan, a Kim’s photography gallery in Jeonju, she had presented unique exhibitions on topics such as ‘Flowering Days,’ ‘Our Neighbourhood,’ and ‘Abandoned Daily Life.’ The author’s actions are those of a cultural activist seeking to revive modern Korean culture. In this collection of prose poems, Potato Flowers, she shares her sincere thoughts from that journey in a simple voice.

Potato Flowers is Jeeyoun Kim’s first prose book. While her previous photography books also contained her characteristically simple texts, this book is not just a collection of photographs, but a collection of her motivations for taking photographs, her thoughts on the subjects she consistently records, and her intimate records. You are able to meet her as a whole person. The book is also a place where she shyly reveals the love for writing that she has harboured since her youth.

I could feel that it was a lifetime of asking fundamental questions about objects without stopping for a single moment. It’s also a bright book that reveals itself without hiding itself. The photographer’s artistic passion, which overflows in every sentence, makes you nod your head and say, ‘Aha, this is the kind of passion that allows her to take on the role of documenting the decline and disappearance of communities in our time. Each and every one of the main characters in ‘Potato Flower’ are people who have lived through a time of decline, so I think it’s safe to call them the people. I recommend that readers pay attention to how the author views their lives and attaches meaning to them.

-Youngchun Kim, The Photographer Who Stopped Walking in Front of the Rice Mill

The poet Kim Young-chun once said that if they had met in their younger days, he would have told her, ‘Stop taking pictures and start writing,’ and appreciated her unadorned writing style.