Hanna Moon’s Unvarnished Portrayal of Life in South Korea

Flash-lit photographs round a desk at Korean barbeque; celebrity-fronted adverts for soju and beer plastered on a bus; glassy high-rises foregrounded by a standard Korean pagoda. These scenes by Korea-born, London-based vogue photographer Hanna Moon will really feel acquainted even to those that’ve by no means been to South Korea, due to the nation’s ever-growing cultural footprint.

However in Moon’s new photograph guide, Virtually One thing, the general temper is extra intimate – and avoid wasting cinematic photographs of casted expertise, refreshingly much less glamorous: Korea serves as a charming backdrop, however the photographer’s family and friends are its candid stars. There’s her mom having fun with a slice of watermelon; vigorous scenes at a sleepover; numerous generations of family and friends, mid-selfie or ringing in Seollal (Korean New Yr) by paying respects to household elders.

And naturally, there’s the mandatory inclusion of meals, in all phases of preparation and ingestion: ladies with plastic-gloved arms rubbing crimson paste into cabbage for kimchi; a chicken’s-eye shot of a desk crowded with banchan, or small aspect dishes; ladies crowded round an order of late-night fried rooster; two pigs heads floating in a plastic tub.

“Dwelling [in London] and going again to Korea, I noticed all these stuff you don’t discover at first. I documented them as a result of I discovered them hilarious, or as a result of I used to be out with pals and having enjoyable. I didn’t assume that a lot,” says Moon, who returned to the nation after the guide was commissioned. However she didn’t search out “something clearly Seoul, like structure or panorama photos, as a result of I wasn’t making a journey guide.”

Curated from an archive of hundreds of photographs, the snaps have been collected over the previous decade, throughout which Moon lived in, then was a customer in Seoul and Daejeon, the nation’s fifth-largest metropolis the place she was born and raised. With a format mimicking home windows on a desktop laptop, the pages are tinted with voyeurism, their acquainted digital frames contrasting with nostalgic scenes. “I’m drawn to the normal aspect of issues, relatively than the brand new,” provides Moon, who shot the majority of the guide within the older northern districts in Seoul.

Named Virtually One thing as a result of it was initially commissioned by a luxurious vogue model, the undertaking’s unvarnished exploration of life in South Korea is a welcome break from the sanitised Korean-ness born of the nation’s gentle energy machine. “Whereas [her work] is crucial in its uncontrived Korean-ness, it doesn’t overly establish with being Korean, or with any of the wretched and limiting ‘buzzwords’ which can be used to explain it,” pal and author Moffy Gathorne Hardy notes within the essay punctuating Moon’s photos. “It recognises id as perpetually beneath development, that each individuals and issues are always changing into.”

Moon is acutely aware of the “obsession” many have with solely displaying South Korea’s extra manicured aspect. “We’re simply so afraid of displaying the susceptible aspect of it, and we must be proud. We simply wish to be seen, and to be seen as nice. However we don’t need to strive so exhausting.” 

Although Moon might actually proceed with a whole collection on Seoul from her archives alone, the photographer has a lot within the works. Alongside her personal pictures, which now spans editorials in British Vogue, campaigns for Gucci and an album cowl for Harry Kinds (Harry’s Home), Moon is placing collectively the upcoming situation of her self-published print title A Good Journal. She’s additionally finding out a masters in movie at London’s Goldsmiths College, and is plotting a undertaking across the Korean church. But it surely’ll be exhausting for her to withstand capturing photographs to accompany it. “Finding out movie solely made me realise how a lot I’m into pictures,” she laughs.

Virtually One thing by Hanna Moon is revealed by Patrick Remy Studio and launches on December 2 at New Malden Methodist Church in London.