Jun Ahn


Jun Ahn is a South Korean photographer, known primarily for her Self-Portrait series of photographs taken from atop high buildings. She has worked extensively in the United States, particularly in New York City, as well as South Korea.
She has produced the books Self-Portrait and One Life.
WWW Official Site

Career

Ahn was educated at the University of Southern California, graduating with a degree in art history in 2006, followed by two years of postgraduate study of photography at the Pratt Institute. While at the Pratt she began work on the Self-Portrait project.
In 2009 and in 2010 she was awarded the Dean's Scholarship at Parsons The New School for Design, and in 2011 received both the Dean's and a departmental scholarship. During this time her work received its first major exhibitions, including a joint exhibition with Kazue Taguchi at PS 122 in New York. The Parsons awarded her a Master of Fine Arts with honors in January 2012, following which she enrolled in a PhD program in photography at Hongik University in Seoul. Ahn received her phD degree in photography. Her dissertation investigates the aesthetic of high-speed photography and in a relation to performance and high-speed photography on her work.

''Self-Portrait''

Ahn's work involves three projects: Invisible Seascape, Float, and Self-Portrait. Self-Portrait depicts Ahn on or near the top of skyscrapers, often leaning from a window or seated on a ledge. Ahn was inspired by a joke about jumping off a building due to the stock market losses from the 2008 financial crisis. She began to think of tall buildings in urban areas as places of contrasts. Ahn sees cities as areas of simultaneous comfort and anxiety, with her photos showing her on the edge of both a physical and psychological space.
Some photos are taken from a first-person perspective, showing her legs dangling into space as she looks down. The project began with a photograph of her feet she took while sitting on the edge of an apartment building while a student at Pratt, and has continued since. The bulk of the photographs are from New York and Seoul, with some from Hong Kong. While Ahn used various safety measures for Self-Portrait, she never altered her photographs in a graphics editor like Photoshop.
For these photographs, Ahn works by gaining access to the building legitimately - it can take several months for the owners to give permission for the project - and setting a digital camera to take a large volume of high-speed images while she poses. These are then sifted to find a picture depicting Ahn looking unconcerned or distracted, captured in what she describes as "...a certain moment of time that did exist, but which we couldn't perceive with the naked eye because it happened too fast."
The Guardian reported that "In the most dangerous shots, such as when she is using her whole body to lean dangerously over the edge, a harness is sometimes used. She explains: "Of course it is not a safe situation. But I always try to be careful.""

''One Life''

Ahn started on One Life in 2013 after finishing Self-Portrait. She was influenced by her time as a teacher at the Korea University Museum. Noting the high levels of anxiety among her students, she started One Life to show and examine the uncertainty and randomness of life. The photography for One Life happened over five years and involved objects captured while in the air, most commonly apples. Ahn said the photographs represent how life is “a process of free fall,” like an object affected by gravity.

Publications

  • Self-Portrait. Kyoto: Akaaka, 2018.
  • One Life. Tokyo: Case, 2018.
  • Until You Left Off Dreaming About Tokyo: Case, 2023.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions

Awards