Koo Bohnchang Biography

Bohnchang studied photography in Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg (HFBK Hamburg), Germany, and returned to Korea in 1985. Striving to break away from the trend in Korean photography scene at the time, which was predominantly influenced by straight photography, Koo selected eight photographers who express their inner voices in subjective ways rather than recording social events or focusing on their subject as object, and organised The New Wave of Photography at Walker Hill Art Center in 1988. This exhibition is evaluated to have opened a new chapter in Korean contemporary photography, collapsing boundaries between art and photography by taking the photographic practice from its traditional role of recording or documenting, to becoming an art form charged with subjective expressions that reflect attributes of various mediums like painting, sculpture, and print.

Since then, Koo's experimental works continued to search for himself and reflect social reality, until the passing of the artist's father when his work took a pivotal turn to capture saturated forms of calm, simple sense of beauty focusing on the cycle of nature. His interest in old objects led to the rediscovery and exploration of traditional cultural assets, culminating in the production of series that capture traces of life contained in various objects like masks, Joseon white porcelain, Gobdol craft, and paper flowers, etc.

Koo has continued to discover and introduce modern and contemporary artists in Korea, not only as an artist but also as a curator with a broad horizon. The artist expanded his works beyond the genre of photography to the realm of fine arts through his unique experimentations that stood firm in the different trends of the art world. With over 50 series of works produced, Koo is a key artist representing Korean contemporary art, who played a pioneering role in leading Korean photography onto the stage of international art world.

Text courtesy Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA).