FOUR EDGES SHADOW

A few years ago, KANG Woongu concluded that he has fulfilled his “compulsory service” as a photographer in this world. Ever since, he says, he has been having more fun with photography. His ensuing works could be viewed as aftershock tremors. His thoughts, experienced and accumulated over a long period, permeate the photography of KANG’s late years. His later work, therefore, is just as notable as what came before. Since 1962, KANG has shown his work at numerous exhibitions at home and abroad. By lifting the burden of Western theories of photography and developing an indigenous visual language, he has pioneered photojournalism and auteurist photography in Korea. KANG refers to himself as a “photographer working exclusively to meet domestic demand.” His artistic inquiries indeed reflect this perspective, which would also contain his message, against the current overflow of photographic works stripped of a sense of identity in the name of “internationalization” and “globalization,” of resistance.