We recently connected with Jacqueline Kyuseo Kim and have shared our conversation below.

Jacqueline Kyuseo , appreciate you joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I learned most of photography, printing, and scanning through putting in hours. I would put myself in the space and practice couple hours every day so I don’t loose the muscle to it and I can train my eyes and taste in photography. For photography, I booked myself countless collaborations with a range of designers so there’s a clear deadline and I can learn how to understand how to make vague ideas make sense to me to shoot. This practice helped me to have a workflow in all stages of production with my fashion and fine art work.

I think persistence was the most essential in learning a skill. I would go to the lab every day until one thing work perfectly. I would get to know people who I can share knowledge with and figure out a craft with. I think being in the right community of people helped me speed up my learning process. I learned most from sharing my work and getting real time critiques and feedbacks.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My work heavily gravitates towards my childhood and my nomadic lifestyle. From having to move around a lot, and being raised by extremely individualistic parents, I struggled to find my community and my definition of “home”. My recent projects were the artefact of figuring out how to explain my background to others.

“Meol-li (afar in Korean)” is a portrait series of friends who grew up in a multicultural environment more or less and are studying abroad away from home. I used this project as a self-reflection to express my longing for home and figuring out where I have been calling home. Shot in large-format film camera, the project was exhibited in a group show called, “Life at Large”.

“Home is not far away” is a collage series where I’m delving into my childhood and creating a euphoric home for myself. It became a conversation between my young self and I of relearning life and reconstructing the definition of home. I used old c-print scans as well as letters on scans of large format film.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

In the future, I aspire to become an educator, sharing my knowledge and passion with others. The summer of 2022 when I worked as a photography instructor at an arts camp, I realised by the end of the three months period that I want to explore my interest in education.

My goal is to reach a stage where I would be invited to share my insights and expertise with a group of individuals. I hope to be part of the environment of fostering young talent and aiding their creative pursuits and exchange inspirations with them.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Initially, during my college years, I limited myself from diving into certain types of work due to a fear of failure. I was stuck in the mindset that it will be the selected group of individuals who would be able to make art. However, realising that time was limited in college, I made a conscious decision to broaden my horizons and explore various creative journey. This shift in mindset allowed me to set a proactive tone for my last year in undergrad, enabling me to build solid portfolio by graduation.

During this journey, I had to unlearn the belief that art was exclusive to specific groups of people. I would restrict my opportunities and possibilities by wrongly assuming that I would lack the ability to execute certain types of idea in a range of medium. Understanding that artistic expression knows no limit was a pivotal moment.

By stepping away beyond my self-imposed limitations, I was able to strengthen my portfolio and free from all the limitations. Moving forward, I hope to continue to stay in this mindset to shape my future pursuits.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jacquelinekyuseokim.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacqandphotos/

Image Credits
Personal Photo, courtesy of Snigdha Gopidi. All the work by Jacqueline Kyuseo Kim