Aperture Announces “The Seoul Issue”

New York, September 11, 2025—Today, Aperture releases “The Seoul Issue,” a kaleidoscopic portrait of Seoul through the eyes of its extraordinary photographers. The latest entry in the magazine’s series of city-focused editions—following Accra, Delhi, Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York, Tokyo, and São Paulo—this issue brings together modern and contemporary image makers who embody the varied and flourishing photography scene of South Korea’s capital, a megacity now at the center of contemporary art and culture.

“The Seoul Issue” introduces some of Korea’s most influential photographers to an international audience. In an in-depth interview, Heinkuhn Oh discusses his uncanny portraits of teenagers, soldiers, and other social types who speak to collective and personal anxiety in Korean society. Aperture’s editor in chief, Michael Famighetti, profiles Bohnchang Koo, who obsessively collects and photographs moon jars, masks, figurines, and other talismanic objects, treating them as conduits to Korean history. Hyunji Nam catches up with Nikki S. Lee, who dropped out of New York’s art world and returned to Seoul after establishing herself as an enfant terrible in the 1990s with portraits of herself embedded in various subcultures. And critic Andrew Russeth celebrates the rich legacy of Space, Korea’s longest-running architecture magazine and a record of Seoul’s shape-shifting skyline.

Many of Seoul’s photographers grapple with the geopolitics and tensions of the past and the anxieties of the present, among them a cold war with North Korea and an ongoing crisis of democracy. While photojournalist Suntag Noh has spent decades depicting the region’s ideological rifts and contradictions with a dark absurdity, Yezoi Hwang hit the streets last winter, photographing large-scale protests that began when a now-impeached president declared martial law this past December. Hwang imbues political subject matter with intimacy, as does the pathbreaking feminist photographer Youngsook Park, whose lyrical 1960s photographs are featured here.

Writer and curator Jaeyong Park contributes an essay on how a younger generation of photographers is exploring Seoul’s postmodern relationship to images, arguing that the city, through its profusion of screens that are “everywhere and nowhere,” has become a “prototype for a post-photographic future.” Cover artist Heeseung Chung grapples with this deluge of images by treating each of her eclectic, playful photographs as incomplete, steering us toward the mysterious gaps between pictures, whereas Chorong An’s recombinant photographs evoke life under the regime of K-beauty.

Weaving together multiple timelines and perspectives, “The Seoul Issue” is an essential resource for understanding how Korean photographers have mapped and continue to map the past, present, and future of a city defined by restless, dizzying transformation.

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Inside the issue:
Columns & Features

Texts:
EDITORS’ NOTE
The Seoul Issue

ABOUT FACE
Heinkuhn Oh’s portraits
capture anxieties of state
and self
Hyunjung Son

BECOMING SEOUL
The photographic gaze has
long shaped Seoul’s political
landscape
Jeehey Kim

SCREEN TIME
How do artists respond to a
city of hallucinatory surfaces?
Jaeyong Park

SPACE IS THE PLACE
For six decades, Space
magazine has chronicled
Seoul’s ever-changing skyline
Andrew Russeth

VISIONS
Youngsook Park forged a
feminist tradition in 1960s
Korea
Sohee Kim

THE COLLECTOR
Bohnchang Koo brings
forgotten histories to life
Michael Famighetti

FLASHBACK DIARY
Yezoi Hwang records the
uprising of a city in crisis
Jungmin Cho

INTO THE WILD
Doyeon Gwon explores Seoul’s
entanglements with animals
Yechen Zhao

K-FRAGMENTS
Chorong An evokes life under
the regime of K-beauty
E. Tammy Kim

COLOSSAL YOUTH
The teenage spirit of Sung Jin
Park
Hiji Nam

NIKKI S. LEE STAYS
IN THE PICTURE
After taking Manhattan,
can the artist reinvent herself
in her hometown?
Hyunji Nam

SIGNALS
Heeseung Chung lingers in the
spaces between images
Sung woo Kim

STRANGER THINGS
Suntag Noh parses the dark
absurdism of the Korean divide
Harry C. H. Choi

AGENDA
Tyler Mitchell, Black
Photojournalism, Germaine
Krull, New Photography
at MoMA

NOTEBOOK
Stephen Shore on the challenges
of the color red

VIEWFINDER
C. J. Alvarez on two
photographers reframing the
US–Mexico border

STUDIO VISIT
Alistair O’Neill on Nigel
Shafran’s convivial London
darkroom

REDUX
Chris Wiley on the legacy
of New Topographics

CURRICULUM
Sara Cwynar on figure
skating, cruel optimism,
and Aby Warburg

ENDNOTE
Novelist Ed Park discusses
his raucous alternate history
of Korea

The PhotoBook Review

DIRECTOR’S CUT
Zack Hatfield talks to Greek
auteur Yorgos Lanthimos

SALON STYLE
Iva Dixit on well-coiffed
publications

DESCRIBING PICTURES
Kim Beil on photobooks
and accessibility

Reviews of photobooks by
Guy Bourdin, Christine Furuya-
Gössler, Malick Sidibé,
and more

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Support has been provided by members of Aperture’s Magazine Council: Jon Stryker and Slobodan Randjelovic, Susan and Thomas Dunn, Kate Cordsen and Denis O’Leary, and Michael W. Sonnenfeldt, MUUS Collection.

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About Aperture
Aperture is a nonprofit publisher that leads conversations around photography worldwide. From its base in New York, Aperture connects global audiences and supports artists through its acclaimed quarterly magazine, books, exhibitions, digital platforms, public programs, limited-edition prints, and awards. Established in 1952 to advance “creative thinking, significantly expressed in words and photographs,” Aperture champions photography’s vital role in nurturing curiosity and encouraging a more just, tolerant society.

Aperture’s programs and operations are made possible by the generosity of our board of trustees, our members, and other individuals, and with major support from 7G Foundation, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, Charina Endowment Fund, Documentary Arts, Ford Foundation, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Marta Heflin Foundation, Ishibashi Foundation, Joy of Giving Something, Anne Levy Charitable Trust, Henry Luce Foundation, Mailman Foundation, MurthyNAYAK Foundation, Grace Jones Richardson Trust, San Francisco Foundation, Thomas R. Schiff Foundation, Jane Smith Turner Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Stuart B. Cooper and R. L. Besson, Kate Cordsen and Denis O’Leary, Thomas and Susan Dunn, Agnes Gund, Michael Sonnenfeldt, Jon Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović, National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and New York State Council on the Arts, with support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

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Press Contact
Lauren Van Natten, +1.212.946.7151, publicity@aperture.org