Filmmaker Park Chan-wook holds his first solo photo exhibition, "Your Faces." Courtesy of Kukje Gallery

Many around the world know Park Chan-wook, creator of such acclaimed films as “Oldboy” (2003) and “The Handmaiden” (2016), as a great director that helped place South Korea at the forefront of international cinema beginning in the early 2000s, but not many know him as a photographer.

Besides making cinematic masterpieces, photography has been an integral part of his artistic identity.

In 2016, Park published “The Handmaiden Photo Book” – which, as the title suggests, consists of still images he took on-site during the production of the psychological thriller. In the following years, he showcased a small batch of his photos in a number of locations with his brother, Park Chan-kyong, including a theater named after him at CGV Yongsan in Seoul and the Kirchner Cultural Centre in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

This October, his first solo exhibition – 30 photographs shot over two decades – opened in the Kukje Gallery Busan. Titled “Your Faces,” the show will run until December 19.

Rather than stills shot on-site or behind the scenes during the production of one of his movies, the displayed photos depict everyday objects and landscapes that Park encountered by chance around the world.

The director explained that – while his cinematic projects are inevitably accompanied by the stress of working with people and spending other’s money – he feels free when he gets to have “a private conversation” with an object through his camera.

Some of the randomly chosen subjects in Park’s photographs at the gallery include a single raincoat hung up to dry at Iguazu Falls in Argentina, a Moroccan marketplace filled with trinkets and a kitsch bathroom in a Chinese restaurant somewhere in the United States.

“Whether it be landscape or still life, perhaps it is that I shoot all things as if shooting a portrait. I portray the status, character, life dynamics, current sentiment, and face of whoever has become the subject of my camera. This is how I communicate with all beings of the world,” Parks explains in the exhibition guide.

**If you have any questions about this article, feel free to contact us at kocis@korea.kr.**