SAF Photographers — From Documentary to Camera-less Photography

Ten SAF photographers across four axes — documentary, landscape, experiment, and critique. From Cho Moon-ho's edges of the world to Lee Sucheol's pictures without a camera.

Photography is often called the medium that captures "things as they are." Meeting SAF 2026's ten photographers in sequence shakes that definition immediately. One walks old streets for the record. Another retouches like a painter to build a house of memory. Another makes photographs without a camera at all. Within one word — photography — many paths open.

This piece groups the ten photographers along four axes.

Record and Documentary

Cho Moon-ho — The Boundaries of the World Through the Lens

A major chronicler of Korean documentary photography. Long attached to edges, peripheries, landscapes being forgotten. → Cho Moon-ho: The Boundaries of the World Through the Lens

Jung Youngshin — Photographing the Layers of Time

A photographer who stacks time's grain. Holds both the discipline of record and an aesthetic of it. → Jung Youngshin: Photographing the Layers of Time

Landscape and Space

Kim Suoh — Korean Medicine Doctor by Day, Oreum at Night

Seoul National University electronic engineering, then a Ph.D. from Kyung Hee Korean Medicine. Returned to Jeju as a doctor and photographer. He shoots Jeju's oreum at night and the four seasons of Jeju horses. SAF work Morning of the Oreum. → Korean Medicine Doctor by Day, Oreum at Night: Kim Suoh's Land of Gods

Lee Yeol — Walking the Path of Art With a Camera

Daily life and journeys in the frame. The posture of camera-as-walking-tool stays within the photographs. → Lee Yeol: Walking the Path of Art With a Camera

Son Eunyoung — The Shutter Returned After Twenty Years of Silence

Western painting at Ewha. After marriage, twenty years as a mother. Picked up the camera to photograph her children and entered the path of photography. Second FNK Photography Award winner; held by MMCA's Government Art Bank. SAF work House on the Hill. → The Shutter Returned After 20 Years of Silence: Son Eunyoung's House and Garden

Experiment and Boundary

Lee Sucheol — Photographs Taken Without a Camera

Osaka University of Arts, photography. Takes the question "must photography use a camera?" onto the image. Experiments making images through the printing process alone. → Photographs Taken Without a Camera: Lee Sucheol's Photographic Edges

Ra Inseok — Straight Curves, a Bent World

A photographer who says "even a straight line reads as a curve." Scratches paper to let ink bleed, or bends a city icon to photograph it. SAF work From Seoul Tower. → Straight Curves, a Bent World: Ra Inseok's Seoul(공개 예정)

Jeong Geumhui — Flowers Fall and Return to Earth, All from One Mind

Hongik University Ph.D. in photography. Based in Busan, she has pursued 花落以土 (Flowers Fall and Return to Earth) and the Donghae Line Station · History series. An artist who brings Buddhist mind-only doctrine into a creative methodology. → Flowers Fall and Return to Earth, All from One Mind: Jeong Geumhui's 花落以土

Thought and Criticism

Choe Jaeran — Between Quarks and Kairos

Chung-Ang photography + Ajou Graduate School of Public Policy. Overlays the time of quarks from particle physics onto natural objects along Suwon's walking paths. → Between Quarks and Kairos: Choe Jaeran's Suwon, Photography of Time

Lee Gwangsu — A Photography Critic's 回 Series

Emeritus professor at Busan University of Foreign Studies and a photography critic. He paints in acrylic, yet a longtime user of photography as language picking up the brush is meaningful within photography's discourse too. The repetition of the character 回 (return) is the starting point. → Return: Six Paintings by Photography Critic Lee Gwangsu

A Guide for Buyers of Photography

Photographic works are especially sensitive to environment. UV blocking and humidity control are critical.

Solidarity Beyond the Lens

84.9% of Korean artists are excluded from institutional finance. Sales of works by SAF-exhibiting artists cycle into a mutual-aid fund, returning as low-interest loans to fellow artists.

Among the ten photographers, one has long documented society's edges; another, having picked up the shutter late, is recovering a twenty-year gap. Different routes, but placed together, each practice's time entangles inside the fund. A shutter click translates into another artist's monthly rent. That's the structure at work.