The edition 2.0 of the Elles x Paris Photo website is growing by the day! You can discover two exclusive interviews every month – one written, and one filmed. Today, we focus on Jun Ahn, a visual artist whose performances explore the concept of gravity.
In November 2020, Paris Photo and the Ministry of Culture, in association with Fisheye Magazine, launched a website dedicated to Elles x Paris Photo – a physical and digital circuit highlighting the female artists featured at the heart of the fair. A way to give them a voice, through written and filmed interviews. After highlighting Valérie Belin, and Laia Abril, we now turn our attention to the work of Jun Ahn.
Born in South Korea, Jun Ahn studied art history in California and photography at the Pratt Institute in New York. “I see art as a kind of language, encompassing all kinds of perceptions, and I see myself as an artist who uses this language,” she says. Fascinated by the idea of performance, the photographer explores, in an “obsessive and repetitive” way, our different perceptions of the world. Without ever resorting to digital tools, she uses her camera to freeze the minute details that the human eye cannot perceive. Among them? The fall, and gravity.
“I compare our life to a free fall. It is born as a result of an action and is inevitably confronted with death. That is why in many projects gravity is used as a metaphor for memento mori. With the inevitability of the beginning and the end, it is uncertain how it will happen,” comments Jun Ahn. By multiplying her shots – each series is born from hundreds of images before she even begins her selection process – the photographer stops time and questions, with sensitivity, the free fall phenomenon.
Read the full interview on the Elles X Paris Photo website
© Jun Ahn
