Lee Gapchul, Land of Others, 1998 © Lee Gapchul

Photographer Lee Gapchul (57), who has long captured the spiritual world of Koreans as it permeates the landscapes of this land, has published a photobook compiling works from an exhibition held 28 years ago. The book brings together works shown in his solo exhibition 《Land of Others》, originally held in 1988 at Gyeongin Art Gallery in Insadong, Seoul, and was recently published under the same title by Youlhwadang.

The works featured in 《Land of Others》 capture distorted everyday scenes and landscapes of ordinary people during the military dictatorship of the 1980s. It was an exhibition conceived by the artist in his youth, driven by a desire to reveal the truth of the era through his own perspective.

While Lee would later gain major recognition in the photographic world with his 2002 exhibition 《Conflict and Reaction》 (Kumho Museum of Art), which traced uniquely Korean traditional imagery such as sinmyeong, 《Land of Others》 is regarded—alongside his debut exhibition 《Yankees on the Street》 (1984)—as a pivotal moment in establishing the photographic aesthetics of his early career, revealing the hidden underside of reality.

The photobook includes over 80 works, combining photographs shown in the original exhibition taken between 1985 and 1988 with additional works shot through 1990. Images such as a child whose face is obscured by a cassette tape with two holes, appearing like a strange monster; police indiscriminately stopping and searching passersby near university districts; and soldiers pointing their guns while a school-uniformed girl walks down an alley—all convey a nightmarish, surreal atmosphere. These works present the suffocating everyday scenes of the dictatorship era as absurd, theatrical situations.

Lee has stated that he was deeply influenced by Robert Frank’s photobook The Americans (1958), which shocked audiences by exposing the philistinism of American society in the 1950s. He explains in the book that his motivation for the exhibition was a desire to present similarly revealing photographs of Korean reality in the 1980s.

An exhibition of works included in the book is also being held at Gallery Now in Gwanhun-dong, Seoul, through the 29th.

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