Jeong Eun Kim is the artistic director of the first edition of T3 Photo Fair Asia. We discussed the artistic direction of a fair and the promising years to come for this new fair dedicated to Asian photography.
Dear Jeong Eun Kim, tell us about yourself and how you became the director of T3 Photo Fair Asia.
I started my career as editor-in-chief of the magazine IAN in 2002. I was publishing the magazine with a Japanese publisher and wanted to showcase Asian photography and translate it into a language other than Korean. Many Japanese people began to recognize my activities as a magazine writer and editor. I then ran my own gallery space, The Reference Seoul.
The T3 Photo Fair Asia is the first fair that you are leading.
As an artistic director, yes. But I was curator of the Seoul Photo Festival in 2010 and general coordinator of the Daegu Photo Biennale in 2012.
Would you say that running an exhibition is different from running a fair?
A lot ! I had never thought about the sales aspect. Before, I met people, welcomed them, and explained the exhibition, the artist and his work. But this year, for the first time ever, a collector asked me the price. And I thought, “Oh, my God.” I now ask each gallery how many sales they have made so far and if they feel comfortable and satisfied.
Tell us about this first edition.
This first edition functions as a sort of preview of our full Asia edition. In the coming years, we hope to include more and more countries and galleries from other Asian scenes, such as Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam. We want the fair to be a bridge, a nerve center.
Would you say that the Korean and Japanese art scenes are different?
In Korea, we had a different movement. This varies firstly at the gallery level. Japan has established galleries dedicated entirely to photographic art, while in Korea the galleries also feature contemporary arts. As for Korean artists, students began studying abroad since the 1990s and began to understand how to talk about art and photography. I think Japan has a different and almost opposite history. The country had a very strong scene from the 1960s to the 1990s, but has lost, for many reasons, the ability to defend its contemporary creation. However, many galleries continue to serve this function, and we present a very good selection of contemporary Japanese photography through them.
More information:
