Story

Story is the first photobook by Kim Sajik, an artist from Kyoto whose work starts from the uncertainty of her own identity in the Korean diaspora. Over ten years she made carefully staged photographs on questions of ethnicity, nationality and gender. Published by Akaaka Art Publishing in 2022.

The story behind the book

Her images blend Asian mythology with references to Western art history. They touch the roots of existence, cross time and species, and dig up everyday life and emotion. Gender, the family system, religion, history: in a world full of these pressures, the book asks where to stand and how to go on living.

Story is not a plot with a beginning and an end. It unfolds across many times and places in photographs and words, in Japanese, Korean and English.

What is in the book

• Staged photographs with texts in three languages
• A cover in vivid red and blue, front and back reversed
• An exposed spine where red and blue threads show like wounds, or like stitches closing a gap

About Kim Sajik

Born in Kyoto, Kim Sajik makes staged photographs of invented stories. Alongside photography she studies traditional Korean dance, exploring what can grow from the trauma passed down through generations of the diaspora. She received the Kyoto Prefecture Culture Prize (Encouragement Award) in 2021.