Documentary photographer, Jin Hong Kim, produced human life in photography through the social and natural landscapes. In Korea, he captured pastoral scenes of people in the breathtaking nature on Jeju Island and chronicled a circus troupe near Incheon, both of which have been elapsed and only remembered in nostalgia of the 70s. In the United States, he continued narrating the lives of African Americans in Harlem, New York and in Memphis, Tennessee with his poignant views. In New York City, he has photographed celebrities, politicians, or artists with his unique style of photography.
During his journey in photography for numerous wedding and political summits, his flavor for photographic style oscillated from innocence to agony or from death to heaven. Numerous encounters with tragic betrayal, anguished hypocrisy, or absolute profanity during his four decades of professional photography provoked him to find solace in their opposite end—God.
One day after the 9/11 attack, Kim discovered a new breakthrough for his photography: lonely trees overthrown by a severe storm in Long Island. As if an unknown force led him relentlessly to click the shutter button on his camera, he seized the sublime moment of fascination and reconciliation with his surroundings. Even though the storm was bitterly cruel, it was a sheer joy to portray unfaltering branches and twigs, helplessly swayed but tightly clung to the trunk. Kim has composed photographic poetry of unyielding trees—voice of the God.
Kim’s photography of the nature has been evolved into cityscapes. The photographic vocabulary of the nature, the people, and the urban environment is wrapped around Kim’s devotion to the trade of photography. Alfred Stieglitz once said, “in photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.” Kim is known for delicate subtlety he instills with his photographic objects, be it may a person, a tree, or a car.