Banal Cities: The Constructed Urban Landscape in Contemporary South Korean Photography

This article analyzes South Korean photography of the 21st century that reconstructs urban landscape to critically reflect on the country’s continuing spatial transformation. Focusing on two photographers, Park Chanmin and Keum Hyewŏn, it explores the connection between photographic representations of urban spaces and actual spaces. In doing so, they contribute to a compelling dialogue that can be traced through South Korean photographic practices of the earlier generations and connects with those of adjacent East Asian countries. Taking the concept of banality, which is characterized by a preoccupation with the mundaneness of life under capitalism, a turn away from the spectacular, an affinity with commodity culture, a lack of depth, and a resistance to engagement, the study discusses their photographs of cities. Being filled with apartment complexes, construction sites, and skyscrapers but empty of people, the images are visually unremarkable and lack both depth and spectacularity. Far from being sublime or picturesque, these photographs initiate a perceptual encounter with the prosaic and depthless. In the process, digital manipulation further anonymizes and empties the photographic space to magnify a sense of boredom and prevent the viewer from moving beyond the surface of a given image. Eventually, the photographs remind us of the commodification of urban space and the attenuated relationship between abstract space and human subjects. In this way, their banal traits embody the conditions of capitalist South Korea and the urbanized status.

ARTMargins, Volume 13, Issue 3, pp. 36-55.

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