Being a Queen
Kyungwoo Chun

Being a Queen
Kyungwoo Chun
The Museum of Photography Seoul
Korean, English

Essays by:
Rune Gade,
Louise Wolthers,
Nathalie B. Shin

Hardcover (Clothbound)
64 pages
210×240 mm
2009
ISBN 9788776951269

Being a Queen is a book about a photographic and ethnological study by the Korean artist Kyungwoo Chun has subjected us. Like Denmark, Korea was also once a kingdom with a queen who had a significance for all Koreans. Kyungwoo Chun wanted to find out how we really feel about the Queen. In order to describe it, he sought out people who feel that they are in some way similar to Queen Margrethe and filmed them while they told, wearing a large blue silk dress of the kind that a queen could wear on ceremonial occasions.Eventually they were – men and women – photographed in the blue silk dress in royal poses and with an exposure time in minutes equal to their age in years, so the photos were blurry. Is the Queen herself, we see, or is it ourselves? The book is published in connection with the opening of the artist’s exhibition in Kunsthal Aarhus on the 28. August 2009. The exhibition was organised by Galleri Image.

About the Artist
Kyungwoo Chun (b.1969 in Seoul) has for many years now been working on photography projects and initiating performances in which the audience is actively involved. Chun attained international recognition through his portraits, many of which have a characteristic blurriness in their movements-the consequence of extended exposure times. As diverse as the artistic approaches seem at a first glance, Chun considers both the performances and the photographs to be in equal measure “visible manifestations of that which is not visible.”

About the Publisher
The Museum of Photography Seoul is a photography museum in Bangi-dong, Songpa-gu, Seoul, South Korea.