A Long Time Coming

It was the last day of the school year, a chilly day in late December. A few teachers were retiring, some were transferring to other schools. And as the minutes ran down before we were all to leave and go our separate ways, I decided that I wanted to take portraits of the teachers who would be leaving Bonglim Middle School. And it started with the first image below.

I went home, looked at the photographs, and immediately wanted to take portraits of everyone I knew in Korea. An ambitious project, but one that I felt I had to do, for a myriad of reasons that one day I’ll be able to talk about. Or not.

I’ve always loved black and white portraiture, but had never done it myself. Just jumped right into it. I personally think using this process uncovers those little gems about the subject, the bits people usually miss. And even more about the relationship between subject and photographer.

It took me a long time to finally make these public. Most of the people photographed haven’t seen their portrait. It was surprisingly difficult putting these together, looking straight into peoples’ souls constantly for weeks.

There are a lot more portraits to work on, a lot more people to take photographs of. This is an ongoing project, and I’ll periodically post some updates here.

For now, here are fifteen people. Please give me some feedback, comments, suggestions, observations. I’d love to hear what you think. Especially from the people photographed.

Thank you.

Yang-hoo

Mi-sook

Man-kyoo

More after the jump.

Sang-hee

Jeong-hyun

Bung-ki

Brian

Garret

Todde

Rachel

Tami

Yuri

Alan

Elizabeth

Sydney

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