From 2014 to 2018, Ki-Ho Park worked on a project on empty houses in Seoul, cumulating in a book and an exhibition at The Museum of Photography, Seoul.
Born in 1960 in Seoul, Ki-Ho Park moved to the United States as a child and studied photography at the Rhode Island School of Design(RISD), graduating in 1986. After returning to Korea in 1987, he worked for various international magazines including Time, BusinessWeek, Fortune and Forbes, and operated a very successful commercial photography business. In 2007, he had his first private exhibition called Photography & Texture, which was a combination of large photographic prints with three dimensional objects. After his solo exhibition, he returned to RISD to earn his master’s degree. His thesis project Everything Must Go, a documentation of empty storefronts across the US during the 2008 financial crisis, was exhibited in New York and Boston. After returning to Seoul, he began documenting deserted old towns that were about to be demolished for new townhouse projects. The resulting project — What We Left Behind — was exhibited in France in 2016. In 2018, his monograph — Silent Boundaries — was published by The Museum of Photography, Seoul, which also hosted the exhibition. The same exhibition was also shown in Three Shadows Photography Art Center in Beijing, and at the Jimei x Aries International Photo Festival in Xiamen, China. Besides his own photography, Ki-Ho also teaches at Yonsei University Songdo International Campus and Graduate School.
Quick links to POY Asia 2023 Judges: Zhou Yang / Takaaki Iwabu / Uma Bista / Ki-Ho Park / Parisa Azadi / Willy Kurniawan / Suzanne Lee / Jilson Tiu / Sandipa Malakar / Nathan Tsui
Job hunters during South Korea’s IMF crisis in 1997, for BusinessWeek.
"To be good a photographer, you must first learn to be a good listener. Unfortunately, it took me thirty years to realize this. But once I learned to listen with patience and care, people began to speak to me honestly in front of my camera. Even a quiet, empty office building spoke to me, inviting me to a private space that I had never known. This is what photography is all about."
Ki-Ho Park
Time magazine cover of President Roh Moo Hyun, 2002.
Exit, West Virginia, 2009. From his RISD master’s thesis Everything Must Go, a documentation of empty storefronts across the US during the 2008 financial crisis.
Empty drawers, 2017, from project Silent Boundaries, which resulted in a book and an exhibition at The Museum of Photography, Seoul.
Between 1984 and 1986, Ki-Ho Park worked on a project on the Cambodian refugees in Providence, Rhode Island, while still a student at the Rhode Island School of Design.
