“I like the idea of concentrating on the absolutely banal things,” says Chan-Yang Kim of his latest photo project, which captures the Korean expatriate community in London’s New Malden
Traditionally overlooked and undervalued aspects of everyday life lie at the heart of Chan-Yang Kim’s latest project: a series of photographs spotlighting the Korean expatriate community in London’s New Malden, an area said to house the highest concentration of expat Koreans in Europe. Titled Dongpo – a label applied to people of Korean ancestry living outside North and South Korea – it features landscape images of the area’s public spaces; intimate portraits of elders at gatherings dressed in glossy hanbok; children and teens around picnics and snack tables; as well as personal photos retrieved from the Kim family archive. “I like the idea of concentrating on the absolutely banal things, rather than the big picture headline news,” says the Seoul-born, Manchester-raised photographer, who shot over a thousand frames during the two years he spent on the project. “I like the quiet stuff everyone does.”
Through the series, Kim conveys a bittersweet nostalgia and togetherness that many in the Korean diaspora can relate to. Capturing these moments required the now east-London-based photographer, who practised street photography in Manchester before starting his current master’s degree, to dramatically rethink his approach. “My style was very loose before – I would take photos of everything and edit it down afterwards. Now I’ve done a 180 … I took the time to get to know people and make connections rather than going in with guns blazing, like I used to do,” says Kim, noting that some of the North Koreans in the area are refugees who arrived in the UK after seeking asylum. “I had to be conscious of crossing lines and building trust.”
The community received him with open arms. “I can speak Korean, so I was treated like a lost son or lost cousin,” adds Kim, who started out meeting members of the community at a local café for senior citizens – before long he was attending private picnics, Christmas parties, and harvest celebrations. “It was very welcoming and hopefully my pictures show that warmth.” Attending these gatherings echoed some of Kim’s childhood memories, from seeing his mother prepare home-cooked meals to meeting other children at Korean school on Saturdays. But his own family photos (which he only found while nosing around cupboards in Manchester two months ago) also weave a personal thread through the community-centric series.
The photo of him being held by his mother as a baby is a personal favourite – a special keepsake, given his mother threw it away after he snapped a photo of it on his phone. To accompany the family photos, Kim asked a New Malden resident to write a couple of poems on longing, family, and separation to be printed alongside. “I don’t have any memories from Korea, but I have the imagination. I ask myself; would I still take pictures; would these be the sort of pictures I would take?” Kim says. “Hopefully I can make a body of work and a book that the community are happy with. First and foremost, they’re the subject of the pictures, so I want to make something for them but I want to make something for me as well, which is why I included the vintage photos.”
Find out more about Dongpo by Chan-Yang Kim here.
