Jeong Eun Kim
Director, The Reference Seoul/Editor-in-chief, IANNBOOKS
Jeong Eun Kim is editor-in-chief of IANN, the contemporary art magazine in Asia, and founder of IANNBOOKS launched in 2007.

The Reference
New Media Publishing Platform The Reference opened in March 2018. Constituted of an art book shop (2F) and exhibition space (B1), The Ref aims to be an art book platform of Asia, to be a receptive space in support of sharing valuable information through publications, exhibitions, and related programs, and providing a place for discussion.

Back Seung Woo
Back Seung Woo (1973~) confesses that the act of photographing within the era of excessive images is meaningless as if ‘shooting water gun under water. Photography’s inherent value of ‘instant’ and the aura of ‘truth’ of art history has long been engraved on the gravestone. In that sense, Back Seung Woo is a contemporary ‘artist’ who studied ‘photography’ and (skillfully) uses the language of ‘photography’. He takes the method of reorganizing semantic networks and manipulating the buoyant images on the surface of the photograph and rather ‘collects’ images than ‘capture’ to unveil the subtle boundary between reality and unreality, virtual and real, and the seen and unseen. Back explores the boundary of reality and unreality through the photograph of a delicate miniature of the city and discloses the irony of reality hidden in the unrealistic landscape of North Korea, which mirrors a giant movie set. In addition, he endlessly experiments with the possibility of multiple significance and expression of ‘photography’ beyond the limit by transforming high-resolution photographs distributed by North Korea for propaganda and adding new interpretations on collected photographs of an individual’s memory.