Setting The Stage North Korea

Having made four trips to Pyongyang over the last few years, the photographer has tried to create a refined project to portray the North Korean regime’s ambition to construct the ultimate socialist city while completely shaping the lives of its inhabitants after this ideal model. After the total destruction of the capital during the Korean War (1950-1953), the government seized the opportunity to rebuild Pyongyang from the ground up and convert it into the perfect propaganda setting. The buildings were designed to provide all inhabitants with a utopian background for their everyday routine and immortalise the socialist revolution.

INSIGHTS

The photographer of this body of work is one of the few Western photographers who have been given the exceptional opportunity to record Pyongyang’s artificial architecture. He tried to capture the forced and almost unrealistic character of the North Korean aspirations. In the process, he places an original focus on the individual.
The monumental front of Pyongyang is an architectural hymn to the Leaders. Their imprint on the city is as imposing as it is all-encompassing. They gave the city its squares and monuments, its memorials and museums, its libraries and theatres, its subway and hospitals, its leisure parks and apartment blocks. Memorial plaques at the entrances of countless buildings list the times the Great Leaders gave ‘on the site guidance’. Throughout the city, mosaics showing the radiant faces of the Great Leaders accompany commuters on their journey, and stelae erected on major thoroughfares remind residents that the deceased Great Leaders shall forever be with them. Slogans on rooftops and over porticos sing the praise of the Leaders, their ideology and the Korean Workers’ Party. In the entrance halls to public buildings, statues or paintings of the Great Leaders, themed to the purpose of the building, welcome visitors.

The main objective of this documentary photography project was to get an insight of urban life within the capital city of North Korea, Pyongyang. Knowledge of the "hermit kingdom" could add a new dimension to the discussion in the constant stream of news coming from the Korean peninsula. The images were made for a book and a large traveling exhibition. This project also serves as a promotion for the capabilities of the maker within his craft..

Since its invention, photography has been giving people the opportunity to look into the distant and inaccessible parts of the world. Even in today's global and highly transparent world, where people can cover large distances in a few hours, we learn a lot about life in other countries through the images and texts accompanying them. This is especially true for closed states, access to which is restricted or impossible for political reasons. In this case, the image is based solely on media coverage, often mythologizing and turning into a set of visual and verbal clichés. North Korea is perhaps the most vivid example of such mythology.