Born of an auditory-verbal impairment in Busan, South Korea, Young Sam Kim grew to become exceptionally perceptive to visual stimuli. Kim’s inclination for painstaking observation coupled with his poetic complexion naturally led him to practice the internalization of his highly conceptual motifs. Kim soon developed his own visual language with a depth only few could fully recognize. As Kim refined his intuition for visual literacy, he quickly developed a heightened sense of expression, gravitating toward photography to capture his enlightened, and often-evocative thoughts and emotions.
After receiving his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2002, Kim continued to reside and work between New York and South Korea. Traveling to the world’s most celebrated metropoleis, Kim drew heavy inspiration from diaphanous threads of commonalities thought to connect every urbanite on a simple, yet distinctively existential plane despite variations in language, culture, and color. Kim’s oeuvre became a laborious dive into both interconnectedness and mobility – two of photography’s most invincible accomplices. In his first series “A World in the City,” Kim re-contextualized pieces of photography through multidimensional layering and superimposition; he calls this narrative technique a hyper-collage. The digitally collaged images are layered into surreal cityscapes – reminiscent of René Magritte and de Goya’s Magical Realism – that are meant to speak of humans stifled by thick forests of urban landscape and architecture, yearning to fly from the tangible toward a life of transcendence. While his first collection focused on humankind’s longing for truth, Kim’s most recent series “Dark Cities” emphasizes a less optimistic angle.
Born of an auditory-verbal impairment in Busan, South Korea, Young Sam Kim grew to become exceptionally perceptive to visual stimuli. Kim’s inclination for painstaking observation coupled with his poetic complexion naturally led him to practice the internalization of his highly conceptual motifs. Kim soon developed his own visual language with a depth only few could fully recognize. As Kim refined his intuition for visual literacy, he quickly developed a heightened sense of expression, gravitating toward photography to capture his enlightened, and often-evocative thoughts and emotions.
© Young sam Kim - People of the City 2
Kim contends that modern cities are replicas of mass production, shrouded with over-consumption and a lack of reflection. Instead of Purple Mountain Majesties overlooking the Re...