Lee Gapchul was born in Hapcheon, Gyeongnam, and grew up in Jinju. Currently, he is represented by Galerie VU' in France.
The Urban Underclass
An
ordinary photography student in his twenties found himself reduced to an “urban
underclass” upon entering Seoul in the early 1980s. This marked the prologue to
Lee Gapchul’s photographic world. Seoul in the 1980s—having passed through the
1970s marked by “economic development fervor and the darkness of
dictatorship”—was truly a period of upheaval.
Under
the pretext of the Asian Games and the Olympics, the state instilled fantasies
of becoming an “advanced nation,” reorganized urban landscapes for foreign
eyes, and implemented policies of pacification through the so-called 3S
(Screen, Sex, Sports). While many flocked to Seoul with dreams of middle-class
prosperity, others were pushed to the city’s margins by high barriers of entry.
As
overseas travel was liberalized, many prominent Korean photographers departed
to study abroad. Lee, however, chose to remain in Seoul. Life was not easy.
Familiar things became strange amid rapid change, and he often felt abandoned
by the world. From this point, he began recording the 1980s—a time both
familiar and filled with turbulence and chaos.
As Song Sujeong has noted, Lee
questioned the illusion of objective documentation within a society caught
between political despair and economic aspiration. Stepping back from realism,
he wandered the country with an outsider’s gaze, photographing anonymous
figures. This resulted in Land of Others (1988), a
work that does not coalesce around a single theme but unfolds the panorama of
the 1980s vividly before the viewer’s eyes.
Emptiness Filled
Lee
continued to travel across the country until he came to believe that
metaphysical themes such as life and death must also be expressible through
photography to truly convey Korea. A single, fate-driven photograph showed him
the way—an iconic image of an elderly face and a hand within the same frame.
Though it conveys no concrete narrative, its mysterious aura invites
interpretation at a higher dimension.
Realizing that capturing dramatic moments
was not the sole path of photography, Lee shifted toward preserving numinous
presence within still time. The key was not intention, but surrender to
intuition and the unconscious. This marked the sublimation of his social gaze
into a spiritual realm. The resulting body of work, Conflict and
Reaction (1990–2002), became a watershed in Korean photographic
history.
The
series, infused with rituals and ancestral rites, indeed carries an aura of the
uncanny, yet transcends shamanism into a surreal realm. It later evolved again
with Gi (2002–2007), which presents a sense of
stillness within motion. Compared to the dense intensity of Conflict
and Reaction, these works appear spatially open, as if granting
breathing room to the image. The agitation of subjects subsides, suggesting a
calmer internal state.
This
transformation continues in Silent Mountains (2008–2019)
and Urban Signs (2008–). Though one focuses on
winter mountains and the other on lightless urban spaces, both resonate with
solitude and silence. Within this solitude, the viewer paradoxically finds
fullness. Lee’s journey seems to echo this trajectory—from the loneliness of an
outsider in youth to a state approaching eosun (耳順), where sound enters the ear and resonates without resistance.
(Lee
Gapchul’s life journey references Song Sujeong’s From Shaman to
Seeker.)
