AN Chorong (b. 1987) has developed a practice that explores the flexibility of photography and its capacity to be transformed into diverse forms and materials. Rather than adhering to a method of photographing according to predetermined themes, she focuses on the act of photography itself, working with large accumulations of diverse images.
 
Ultimately, she approaches art as a form of practice, using snapshot photography as a medium through which to engage with everyday life and artistic inquiry.

AN Chorong has developed her practice by focusing on the flexible possibilities of photography as a medium that freely traverses the boundaries between everyday life and art, the commercial and the non-commercial.
 
In particular, she has been interested in the small incidents and encounters that unfold around photography, using snapshot photography as a primary mode of practice through which to explore art as something embedded in daily life.
 
Rather than producing photographs within predetermined scenarios, she embraces the contingency of snapshot photography, allowing her to freely capture the diverse facets of everyday experience.
 
The artist stores these snapshots—fragments of fleeting and varied moments—as digital data on hard drives. Later, when establishing the direction of a project, she retrieves and categorizes the images, bringing them back into physical space.
 
Through this process, AN Chorong is particularly interested in the new contexts that emerge when immaterial photographic images acquire a tangible, physical presence.

《Natural Gene》, a solo exhibition held at Taste House in 2020, was composed of images of the reverse sides of postcards sent to the artist by a friend from various travel destinations between 2007 and 2011, alongside photographs taken by the artist during business trips and travels from 2013 to 2019.

Postcards sent by the artist’s friend from travels around the world, together with photographic images that AN Chorong later captured and selected during her own journeys to different destinations, were materialized into a variety of forms and unfolded throughout the exhibition space.
 
The images from the reverse sides of the postcards were transformed into miniature landscapes contained within rocket pendant necklaces, enlarged into exhibition backdrops in an ultra-wide-screen format, and cropped according to the dimensions of Vogue Girl magazine before being reproduced as prints in varying scales throughout the gallery.

AN Chorong’s photographs consisted of 1st Try and 2nd Try snapshots—images of the same subject taken with a 35mm compact film camera during various business trips and travels—as well as photographs captured in a single shot.
 
As a habitual gesture of the artist, the images taken twice reveal subtle shifts in focus and composition; passersby appear or disappear within the frame, rearticulating what the photograph seeks to convey. At the same time, they leave traces of the trivial yet meaningful moments that unfolded between the first and second exposures, like images attached to a message.
 
The single-shot photographs were presented within a variety of ready-made frames, often appearing like home décor ornaments placed along the horizon line of sunset landscapes—images that echoed those found on the postcards sent by her friend.

Having experimented with the flexibility of photography and its capacity to be transformed into various forms, AN Chorong has also collaborated across a range of fields related to photography, continually exploring the relationships that photographs generate and the possibilities they open up.
 
For example, Beauty Not Beauty (2021), a collaborative project with graphic designer Yang Meanyoung, presents the research outcomes for the sixth issue, BEAUTY, of COOL Magazine, which focused on the theme of K-beauty.
 
In this project, AN Chorong and Yang Meanyoung drew on the format of mood boards commonly used in the fashion industry. They began with a palette representing the material characteristics of cosmetic brands distributed in Korea and layered various images associated with K-beauty culture on top, gradually constructing the work through the accumulation and juxtaposition of visual references.

The more than 1,000 images used in Beauty Not Beauty are the result of months of photographing, collecting, and cataloguing materials related to what is referred to as K-beauty and the broader culture of appearance-making that surrounds it.
 
Images of cosmetic tools, fragmented female bodies commonly employed within the visual language of the beauty industry, and abstract forms suggestive of collagen function as graphic elements within the mood board, forming multiple layers of visual embellishment. The resulting composite image presents the phenomenon of contemporary K-beauty in a complex and multifaceted manner.

Meanwhile, in her solo exhibition 《Fem》, held at d/p in 2022, AN sought to explore both what the women depicted in photographs see and what she herself sees as a female photographer, drawing on the idea that photography is a medium that reflects everyday ways of looking.
 
The exhibition consisted of photographs selected from the artist’s image database accumulated between 2017 and 2022, including photographs of women as well as images she identified as embodying a specifically female perspective.

In her photographs, women appear simply as people living their everyday lives. The images alternate between the comfort and familiarity of domestic spaces, household objects and furniture bearing traces of daily use, friends and colleagues from the artist’s circle, and scenes from the world beyond the home.
 
Photographs taken by a mother during everyday leisure activities such as walks and hikes, and later passed on to her daughter, reveal moments she wished to preserve and share from her own life.

《Fem》 presented these photographs alongside the artist’s own images, choosing to regard photography not as something divided between the work of professional artists and that of ordinary individuals, but as a medium through which people record and preserve moments they wish to keep from everyday life.
 
In AN Chorong’s exhibition, images of women do not conform to conventional definitions of femininity or socially agreed-upon notions of what is considered “feminine.” Instead, they depict people simply living their daily lives, shifting attention away from idealized or stereotypical representations of women and toward women as real individuals who exist alongside us in everyday reality.

The following year, AN Chorong presented AN CHORONG PLUS (2023) at the pop-up and exhibition space Dapalm, a project that appropriated cellphone cases as photographic frames and inserted her photographs into the everyday lives of others.
 
In this project, photographs became inseparable from mobile phone accessories, extending the ways in which photography exists in everyday life. By allowing images to circulate as “photographs inserted into phone cases that are themselves photographed in selfies,” the work generates a chain of images within images.
 
Through this process, the artist prompts a reconsideration of the ontological status of images produced through photography, a practice that has become a ubiquitous cultural act.

This attempt to bring images into the realm of materiality through their reliance on physical supports continued in 《Flesh》, a solo exhibition held at Primary Practice in 2025.
 
Through photographs placed on and inserted into structures resembling four-person dining tables laid on their sides, the artist evokes a familiar mode of photographic existence: images tucked between the tabletop and the glass surface in everyday domestic settings.
 
In doing so, she directs the viewer’s attention toward a more intimate dimension of photography, one that resonates with the medium’s enduring association with remembering and preserving specific memories and experiences from the past.

In this way, AN Chorong’s photographs, rooted in personal habits and everyday gestures, extend into works such as New Home (2024), in which photographs are rolled up and placed inside transparent glass cups.
 
Rather than emphasizing the interpretive meaning or aesthetic achievement of the image itself, these works foreground the material conditions through which photographs exist, evoking the intimate patterns of everyday life and prompting reflection on the relationship between photographic images and daily experience.

The photographs presented in 《Flesh》 likewise consist of ordinary scenes drawn from the artist’s everyday surroundings, featuring family members, friends, objects, and landscapes.
 
The figures who appear in her photographs are boldly cropped, and the backdrops draw the gaze nearly as much as the objects at the center. Most of the objects are less signs meant to prove some special relationship with the artist than they are things that share the emotions running through characteristically abstract situations.
 
For instance, the wrinkles and visible veins of an elderly woman are transposed into the heightened materiality of leather (Apricot and Woman, 2020; Visiting Hours, 2024; Happy Birthday, 2024), while an image of hands massaging a senior citizen’s feet and legs (Massage, 2020) leads to a foreign material sense that stems from the context between two bodies representing different times.

At the same time, as images partially excerpted from the objects that form an individual’s space, the individual beliefs, desires, wishes, compulsions, and tastes that can be gleaned from them are reduced into images of objects themselves, stripped of their original signs and symbolic systems.
 
Moreover, scenes in which only fragments of the body remain—such as a posture cutting and sharing food at a table, or hands busily moving in the background of an arrangement of objects—create space for narratives that extend beyond the frame. These images invite viewers to project their own memories, experiences, and emotions, opening the work to a range of personal associations and interpretations.

In this way, AN Chorong’s snapshot photography captures the textures of everyday life while dismantling hierarchies among the elements within the image. Moving beyond the realm of personal reminiscence or private sentiment, her photographs draw viewers closer by inviting psychological, emotional, and narrative responses.
 
At the same time, by combining photographic images with a range of ordinary objects, she evokes the everyday sensory conditions that surround photography itself. Through this artistic practice, AN Chorong continually tests the flexible boundaries of the photographic medium, allowing photographic images to resonate with the emotional textures of lived experience.

“As someone who takes photographs, I think my task is to capture scenes that are easily overlooked because they are so familiar in everyday life, and to tell stories about them.” (AN Chorong, from an interview with BE(ATTITUDE))

AN Chorong studied Ceramics & Glass and Sculpture at Hongik University and received her MFA in Sculpture from its graduate school. Since 2016, she has worked both independently and collaboratively as part of the collective CO/EX, which she co-founded with photographer Kim Juwon.
 
Her solo exhibitions include 《Flesh》 (Primary Practice, Seoul, 2025), 《Fem》 (d/p, Seoul, 2022), and 《Natural Gene》 (Taste House, Seoul, 2020). She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including 《Referential》 (HITE Collection, Seoul, 2026), 《Breathing》 (Seo-Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, 2026), 《THE NEUTRAL》 (The Willow, Seoul, 2025), 《Natural Born Odd》 (Salihara Arts Center, Jakarta, 2023), and 《Transposition》 (Art Sonje Center, Seoul, 2021).
 
AN Chorong has been selected for several residency programs, including the 2026 DOOSAN International Residency, the 2025 Singapore Art Museum Residency, the 2023 International Artist Residency Exchange Program at Fonderie Darling in Canada, and the 2020 MMCA Residency Goyang.

References

• 안초롱, AN Chorong (Artist Website)
• MnJ문화복지재단, 안초롱 (MnJ Foundation, AN Chorong)
• 비애티튜드, [인터뷰] 사진을 둘러싼 수많은 이야기들
• 취미가, [전시 개요] Natural Gene (Taste House [Exhibition Overview] Natural Gene)
• 아트선재센터, [작품 설명] Beauty Not Beauty (Art Sonje Center, [Artwork Description] Beauty Not Beauty)
• d/p, [서문] Fem (d/p, [Preface] Fem)
• 프라이머리 프랙티스, [서문] Flesh (Primary Practice, [Preface] Flesh)