AN Chorong
has focused less on taking photographs for a specific subject or completed
scene, and more on the act of photographing, collecting, classifying, and
retrieving images itself. Born in Busan in 1987, the artist studied Ceramics
& Glass and Sculpture at Hongik University before turning to photography as
her primary medium, drawn to its flexibility, lightness, and capacity to be
transformed into diverse forms.
From images that accumulate everyday scenes,
such as Birds 2013-2019(2019), to projects that bring piles
of photographs stored on hard drives back into physical space, her work
examines how photography is produced, stored, and reconnected within life.
An important early direction in her practice begins with a nonlinear treatment
of the relationship between photography, time, and memory. 《Natural Gene》(Taste House, 2020) was an
exhibition that brought together images of postcards sent by the artist’s
friend from travel destinations between 2007 and 2011, and photographs taken by
the artist during business trips and travels from 2013 to 2019.
In this work,
the 1st Try and 2nd Try photographs of the same subjects reveal, through slight
shifts in focus and composition and through the appearance and disappearance of
passersby, how memory wavers within a very short interval of time. Rather than
treating photography as fixed evidence of the past, the artist approaches it as
a place where things that never arrived, things that have passed, and fragments
of different times are temporarily anchored.
AN Chorong’s work later expands toward the question of what kinds of gazes and
ethics photography constructs in everyday life. Beauty Not
Beauty(2021), a collaborative project with graphic designer Yang
Meanyoung, researched K-beauty and the culture of appearance-making, showing
through more than 1,000 accumulated images how cosmetics, female bodies,
collagen, and the visual language of the beauty industry overlap.
In 《Fem》(d/p, 2022), the artist focuses on what
the women in the photographs see and what she sees as a woman photographer,
treating images of women not as socially idealized representations or
conventions, but as the presence of real people living in everyday life. Here,
photography becomes not merely a medium for recording subjects, but a device
that asks who sees, what is kept, and what kind of image is left behind.
Her recent solo exhibition 《Flesh》(Primary Practice, 2025) explores how photographic images stored as
data acquire “flesh” through physical supports. Photographs rolled inside glass
cups, as in New Home(2024), installation structures that
recall photographs inserted between a dining table and its glass surface, and
bodily fragments and everyday scenes of family members and close acquaintances
in works such as Apricot and Woman(2020), Visiting
Hours(2024), Happy Birthday(2024), and
Massage(2020), do not confine photography to private
sentiment, but turn it into a medium that calls forth the viewer’s own memories
and sensations.
As can be seen in the group exhibitions 《Referential》(HITE Collection, 2026) and 《THE NEUTRAL》(The Willow, 2025), her work
engages with the materiality and datafication of photography, the secularity of
images, and their affective potential, reconsidering the image environment
after photography within the sensations of life.
