Bongjo Kang

(b.1973 Korea; resides Chicago, IL)

Living Space of the Growing Thing: Part II - Apartment is the second in Bongjo Kang’s three-part series on life and the space around it. The architecture and city planning that accommodate a populace pulled into urban centers by industrialization has given rise to what Kang calls the “landscape of capitalism.” The black-and-white photographs in this series juxtapose towering Korean apartment buildings with neighboring single-story homes, open fields, or busy highway systems. If the structures are indistinct and impersonal, they are still home to a great many people. The night views of these apartment buildings allow for light from the windows to suggest the people within, the brilliant glow also referencing the Zen Buddhist convention of white representing life’s beginning and end.

Bongjo Kang was born in Pusan, South Korea in 1973. She holds a BFA in photography and image from Kyung-il University in Taegu, Korea (1999) and an MFA in photography and design from Hong-ik University in Seoul. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held in Lux Gallery, Mong Whan Art Gallery, and Worker Hill Museum Photo Gallery in Seoul, and at Young Gwang Gallery, Jeon Kyung Sook Gallery, and Sung-am Hospital in Pusan, Korea. Her photographs have been collected by Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Japan, and published in its 2000 and 2002 Photographs by the Next Generation: Young Portfolio Acquisitions. Kang has taught at the Boram Institute in Seoul and at Bowdoin College in Maine.