Photobook Lounge Project
Issue 01
Portrait
Various Artists
Museum Hanmi
English and Korean
Softcover
100 x 100 mm
2015
The main theme of the very first ‘PHOTOBOOK LOUNGE PROJECT’ is “Portrait’. From the invention of photography, portrait photography greatly contributed the development and thrive of photography. It is a familiar genre to public, and fine art photographers who works in portrait photography are consistently coming on the scene. The origin of the word “portrait” is a combination of “pour”, meaning strongly fix and “traire”, meaning draw. In other words, the significance of”portrait” connotes both desire of immobilizing the object into a fixed area and desire of producing new images by drawing a different one from another.”Portrait” which has an ambiguous meaning, have various forms such as form that was influenced by paintings, form that utilize natural lights and artificial lighting and form that emphasize the creativity of the artist by adding directions etc.
The books of portraits which reveal the artists creativity were selected among various portrait photogrphy books for this project, and 12 books will be presented with summary.
(Source: back blurb)
About the Publisher
In November 2003, the Hanmi Photo Gallery, the first art museum specializing in photography in Korea, was launched. At that time, there was no specialized organization in Korea that sponsored photo creation and exhibited and collected photos. The Korean-Micki Museum of Photography has launched exhibitions, publications, and education projects for the popularization of photographic art and the globalization of Korean photography, and actively promoted exchanges with overseas photography institutions.
The Korea Photo Culture Research Institute (currently Museum Korea-U.S. Research Institute) was established in 2009 and expands and organizes Korean photographer data, to enhance the substance of Korean photographers that are worthy of the physical growth of Korean photography and raise Korean photographers, which were staying at the level of personal research to the level of regular academics. Since its inception, the research institute has been publishing a collection of materials that are the basis for Korean photographer research every year. Then, in 2012, the Hanmi Photography Academy (currently Museum Hanmi Academy) was opened to expand the base of the photography population and enjoy the public’s photographic art.
In 2022, a new site was opened in Samcheong-dong for the 20th anniversary of its opening. This was a new attempt to expand the art of photography and seek contact with contemporary art. To commemorate this departure and strengthen the will, the art museum was reborn as a museum. Museum Hanmi embraces the tradition of photography and accepts contemporary art that takes photography as a companion as an extension of photographic art. While continuing its passion for photography so far, Museum Hanmi welcomes the attempts and achievements of new art that have arrived with the digital era.
https://museumhanmi.or.kr/
(Source: https://museumhanmi.or.kr/about/)
