‘Korean Schooling’ is one of my favorite personal projects, shot in South Korea between February and March 2018.
The project came up sort of by accident. I was visiting South Korea invited by a local magazine called Pinzle to work on a few projects. I spent over 3 weeks in South Korea and I had prepared a huge list of places to visit and photograph,
mainly modern architecture.
One day I got a little lost and ended up in the playground of a school, getting fascinated by it’s symmetries, pastel hues, and elements such as the funny local trees, the old school clocks, the football goals, the flag or an alphabet I couldn’t
understand. The moment I clicked the first photo I immediately felt the need to visit more schools and try to make a strong body of work out of it. The series started in Seoul, but few days later I visited Busan and managed to visit few schools for the series.
The working process was rather simple. Thanks to GPS mobile apps, locating schools was very easy. Luckily, playgrounds in South Korea remain open during holidays and weekends for the children to play, so accessing them was no
hassle. Sometimes I needed to ask for permission to get in and photograph, but quit