Yoll Lee walks to trees by day and stands before them at night, light in hand. Himalayan Lalligurans, Madagascar's baobabs, Jeju's pangtrees — single sittings, one photograph.
"A tree is a slow human, and a human is a fast tree."
Artist Profile
Yoll Lee (Lee Yeol) is a tree photographer expressing the beauty of nature and life around trees. He graduated from Chung-Ang University College of Arts in photography and studied at Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan; since 2012 he has pursued tree-centered work in earnest.
He has taught as a lecturer at Konkuk University and as an adjunct professor at Namseoul University. From 2022 he has served as chair of the Forest of Art Social Cooperative, dreaming of spaces where art and nature coexist. In 2025 he won the 14th Green Literature Award for his photo essay Slow Human, extending his practice into writing.
The Work
His way of working is singular. By day he walks to the tree; at night he stands before it with a light. Through the process of staying up before a single tree and adjusting the light, the tree's held memory and history of place, along with his own emotion, condense into one photograph.
Starting with Blue Trees (2013), he continued Forest (2016), Dreaming Trees (2017), Human Trees (2018). His lens widened abroad — Himalayan Lalligurans in Nepal, olive trees in Italy, baobabs in Madagascar, mangroves in Fiji. His SAF contributions — Mango tree_Sawani, Moonlight Mangrove_Tokuo, Hackberry Tree of Myeonjeon-ri, Jaeundo — carry his distinctive language of light.
This work is distinct from documentary photography. Over the record of fact, the subjective flow of emotion through light — the tree goes beyond an actual tree to become a being in itself.
SAF
Lee Yeol has long cared about art's social role. He led a successful 2013 campaign to protect trees along the Yangjaecheon embankment, and founded a social cooperative where artists dream of living with nature. SAF participation extends this. A voluntary solidarity, responding with peers to the structural wall of financial discrimination. Sale revenue becomes a mutual-aid fund, returning as low-interest loans.
Discover Yoll Lee's works at SAF Online.
Works by Lee Yeol
Related reading
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- A Roundtable with Five Women Artists — Artists are not born with a gender, but life places gender's weight differently. A roundtable with five women artists who endured the triangle of childcare, livelihood, and creation.
- Studio Visit: A Day in the Life of SAF Artists — The deepest path to understanding an artist's work is the studio. We visit the studios of SAF artists and document how their days unfold.
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Collecting Guides
Seed Art Festival
Published April 8, 2026
