I feel that a lot of the images coming out of Korea either focus on the alarming rate (at least deemed so by western society) at which women undergo plastic surgery or are part of the larger pop culture scene depicting either celebrities or other other faces which belong to the uljjang variety. (Click here, if you are unfamiliar with what an uljjang is.) This is what made stumbling across Kim Il Kwon’s photography so magical. I am in no way judging the pop culture side of Korea or attempting to comment about the plastic surgery industry (which is a much larger and complicated discussion), but in a sea of similar looking faces that tend to adhere to relatively strict guidelines of “cute”, I just found the change of pace to be a breath of fresh air. The thing is that the women Kim has photographed are women, who may or have may not undergone work to achieve the cookie-cutter features that the majority of Koreans desire. But instead of being photographed in typical Aegyo fashion, they’ve been taken in this dreamy – “I just woke up and the world is beautiful” kind of foggy editorial style. And there’s something really refreshing about that.
To view more of Kim’s work, visit his Tumblr account or Facebook
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