- Overview
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This is a compilation of photographs taken from Lee Dongkeun's documentary, which won the 10th Ilwoo Photography Award, about the Arirang Performance Group, a team of North Korean defector performers.
- Book Intro
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IN THE SPOTLIGHT is a book of photographs following a seven-year record of North Korean dance and song, performed by a group of defector performers called the Arirang Performance Group. Lee Dongkeun took painstakingly detailed photographs of his subjects, who are traditionally ignored and relegated to society's perimeters.
Most of the North Korean migrant women in Arirang Performance Group have been professionally trained in North Korea to give stage performances. Some of them have never been on a stage before coming to South Korea, and a few have taken up playing the accordion for the first time for the sake of the performances. Dressed in bright, kitschy costumes and using colorful props, the performers present North Korean song and dance to their audiences, and in so doing transcend everyday life and kitsch realism effortlessly. They represent a part of the Korean diaspora that occurred as a result of the nation's division, while at the same time features lives that remain on the periphery and have not completely integrated into a South Korean identity. Lee lends a carefully considerate yet objective perspective into these performers' lives.
This book of photography includes 81 photographs from the performance series of the Arirang Performance Group, along with the author's note "Arirang Performance Group," the essay "Kitsch Realism and Behaviorial Subjectivity" by Lim Jihyeon (professor of sociology at Sogang University and director of Transnational Humanistics Research Institute) along with the essay "A Perspective That Refuses Otherness" by Kim Sora, the art critic.
- About the Author
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Lee Dongkeun
Lee Dongkeun was born in Busan in 1966 and studied photography at the Kyungsung University multimedia graduate school of photography. Ever since he was little, Lee harbored a natural interest in peripheral subjects, particularly the vulnerable members of society, which inspired him to take pictures and keep records of their lives. Currently, he is working on documentaries about people who become refugees as a result of the divisions and conflicts that happened throughout Northeast Asia, with a heavy focus on the Korean Peninsula. He has taken an in-depth approach into contemporary diasporas, such as marriage migrants, their families, and North Korean defectors. He has held nine solo exhibitions including An Invitation (KT&G Imagination Gallery, Seoul, 2013) and also participated in multiple group exhibtions such as PHOTOVILLE 2019 (New York, 2019). In 2019, he received the 10th Ilwoo Photography Award in the documentary category, and in 2012 was selected as finalist in the 5th KT&G Korean Photographer Support Program. Lee's works can be found at the KT&G Gallery and the Yongwol Donggang Photography Museum. He has taught photography at many universities and art museums and is currently an adjunct professor at Kyungsung University.
- Award
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Korean Publishers' Association, 2020, Most Beautiful Book in Korea
