Park Chanmin (b. 1970) has explored the relationship between the structure of urban spaces and the people living within them through photography. The artist observes how, despite their apparent differences, the buildings that fill the city ultimately form a similar concrete jungle. Likewise, while urban dwellers live according to their individual personalities, their identities are often concealed within the masses, becoming blurred.

Park focuses on the relationship where the environment affects the people living in it, while the people, in turn, alter their surroundings. He captures the urban environment with a contemplative approach, reflecting this dynamic interaction.

Park Chanmin's first series on urban spaces, Intimate City (2007-2009), features black-and-white photographs of cityscapes viewed from a distance. The densely packed buildings in his images appear as one large, indistinct mass, obscured by a hazy atmosphere.

He used digital techniques to remove the names of apartment buildings, further emphasizing the uniformity and anonymity of the urban environment. The black-and-white treatment of the photographs heightened this monotonous portrayal of the city.

From 2012 to 2014, Park worked on the series Untitled; The Level of Deception, where he expanded beyond Korean urban environments to capture buildings in Europe, including the UK and the Netherlands. By digitally removing the backgrounds of these buildings, he rendered their purposes and contexts ambiguous, creating an unreal atmosphere.

These works raise questions about how we perceive space and challenge the notion of photography as a purely factual medium.

In 2010, Park Chanmin introduced the Blocks series, focusing on apartment buildings in Korea and communal housing in Scotland. As in his previous series, he used post-processing techniques to erase the details of the buildings, obscuring their identities and transforming them into massive, indistinct blocks.

In Blocks, the reduced distance between the camera and the buildings emphasizes their presence. Park removed windows, doors, balconies, traces of daily life, signs, advertisements, and nameplates, leaving only the uniform concrete surfaces.

Park Chanmin developed the Blocks series with the idea that while apartment buildings may appear to shape their identities and value through branding, they are ultimately just immense concrete blocks. By removing the passageways between interior and exterior, Park presents these buildings as uniform masses, symbolizing the standardized, communication-lacking lives of the urban dwellers inhabiting them.

After this, Park Chanmin's interest expanded to various urban environments, leading to the Urbanscape; Surrounded by Space (2012-) series, which captured urbanscapes from places like Seoul, Busan, Daegu, Hong Kong, and Macau. These works portray dense clusters of buildings, with their facades overlapping and enclosing each other. Although the backgrounds vary across different cities, the images emphasize the lines and surfaces within the urban spaces, creating what appears to be geometric patterns rather than showcasing the unique characteristics of each region.

As Park observed the coexistence of residential, commercial, and sometimes industrial spaces in contemporary cities, he reflected on how these spaces we create increasingly surround and enclose us. Like conducting case studies, he continued this series by documenting and arranging images of cities to reveal the common structural patterns shared across diverse urban environments.

Park Chanmin's recent Cities series, similar to his previous Blocks series, captures urbanscapes with their architectural details meticulously removed. While Blocks focused on buildings from a close-up perspective, emphasizing the architecture itself, Cities illuminates vast urban landscapes from a distant viewpoint, almost like an aerial map.

Rather than highlighting the differences and unique qualities of cities like Hong Kong and Osaka, Park concentrated on the structural similarities of urban spaces. To achieve this, he simplified detailed elements, allowing the overall structure to stand out, resembling dioramas or aerial views, where the densely packed urban forms are prominently displayed.

As Park Chanmin observed cities across different countries, he came to believe that, despite their distinct names and histories, many cities ultimately evolve in similar forms. This phenomenon may be a result of humanity’s desires converging beyond cultural and regional differences, or perhaps we have always been striving for the same thing.

Park’s perspective on these cities does not reveal any criticism or pessimism. Instead, his work embarks on a journey to explore the true nature and structure of modern cities through the medium of photography, capturing the essence of urban spaces and the lives of those who inhabit them.

“In all cities, individuals can only discover the difference in their life by knowing what space is built in the city.”

Park Chanmim graduated from Korea University’s Department of German Literature (1997) and obtained a master’s degree from Chung-Ang University’s Graduate School of Photography (2008). After that, he graduated from the University of Edinburgh, UK with a Master’s degree in Contemporary Art (2011). He held his first solo exhibition in 2008 after being selected for a young artist support contest at Gallery Lux (Seoul, South Korea). Up until 2022, he has had nine solo exhibitions.

He was selected as the 1st SKOPF (KT&G Sangsangmadang Korean Photographer’s Fellowship, Korea) and won the 6th ILWOO Photography Award exhibition section (ILWOO Foundation, Korea). His works are in collections of various museums and foundations such as The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art(Gwacheon, Korea), ILWOO Foundation, Daegu Museum of Art(Daegu, Korea), Goeun Museum of Photography, (Busan, Korea), Seoul Museum of Art(Seoul, Korea), The Sovereig Art Foundation (Hong Kong).

References

• 박찬민, Park Chanmin (Artist Website)
• K-ARTIST.COM, 박찬민 (Park Chanmin)
• 박건희문화재단, 박찬민, Intimate City, 2007-2009 (Parkgeonhi Foundation, Park Chanmin, Intimate City, 2007-2009)
• 월간사진예술, 공간;도시④ : 박찬민 "CITIES" 도시 공간에 대한 해석, 2021.08.25
• 갤러리 진선 (Gallery Jinsun), 박찬민 Park Chanmin_인공의 풍경