Park Chan-wook

Park Chan-wook (born in 1963 in Seoul) is one of the most important and influential South Korean filmmakers in contemporary cinema.

After studying philosophy, he established himself on the international scene in the early 2000s with his acclaimed “Vengeance Trilogy,” whose masterpiece Oldboy won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004. His photographic practice began at university and has continued alongside his career as a filmmaker. Developed during his film shoots and travels, and far removed from the obsessive rigor he brings to filmmaking, photography allows him to embrace freedom and spontaneity. He poetically captures the strangeness of everyday life, its details and interplay of light, ultimately shaping a world that stands in stark contrast to the tensions and violence that animate his films.

Following his exhibition Your Faces at Kukje Gallery in Seoul in 2021, his photographic work is being exhibited in Europe for the first time at the 2026 Rencontres d’Arles, at the Fondation Lee Ufan Arles. The exhibition will then move to Galerie VU’ in the autumn.