Your name
Sungchul Lee
Place of birth
South Korea
Place where you live now
United States
3 words to describe you
Simple, raw, human
Why do you take pictures?
Because it's like closing my eyes, which is my favorite thing to do; it simultaneously reveals and removes things that exist in my mind.
Where do you get your inspiration?
My apartment
Who are your influences?
My partner
What determines the subject matter you choose?
My past experience as a photojournalist
What impact would you like your art to have?
I want to create work that deeply touches the human unconscious that they could never fully experience through everyday conversation or relationships. And I hope that my work, in its own quiet way, can generate even a small sense of hope in their lives.
What artwork do you never get bored with?
Do Ho Suh
Is there anything you want to add?
Here is my website: https://leeleedug.com

Framing The Unborn
Project statement

In 2015, I first joined the press as a photojournalist, and since then, I have faced countless painful scenes through the viewfinder. People were sobbing and crying, and I was trained and instructed to observe the situation without running away. As time passed, I became more and more insensitive to people's pain, and at some point, I just pressed the shutter without any emotion. In her book Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag writes that people who are repeatedly exposed to images of human suffering can become increasingly desensitized. Instead of feeling others’ pain, they reduce subjects to mere objects of observation. The camera and I completely erased the subject’s identity, and one day, my suppressed emotions collapsed, creating skepticism and anger toward the medium of photography.

Through my most recent project Framing the Unborn, I reflected on what happened to the subjects during the photo shoots, such as how their identities became distorted and objectified by my camera. I covered everything in my apartment with white tape, preserving only a shell of the space’s identity. By constantly moving white-taped furniture and objects, I manipulated, classified, and compressed the space, like I did as a photojournalist. Through this process, I re-experienced and reinterpreted my past actions of deconstructing and reconstructing of my photo subject’s identity.

sungchul lee
@leeleedug