Documentation and Expression


The city is in constant change. Like a living organism, it grows and declines, carrying traces of the people living within it. The 2025 DAEJEON PHOTO thematic exhibition, Cities and Humans, records urban landscapes worldwide and highlights the human stories inside. Though these stories come from different times and places, they leave us with the same question:
“What memories are we building in these spaces?”

In Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, Marco Polo describes cities scattered in an unseen order—cities glowing with gold, endlessly expanding, existing only in memory, and constantly crumbling and rebuilding. Though different in appearance, these cities share an invisible connection.

The urban landscapes in this exhibition are similar. Captured in different times and places, the images seem disconnected but connect through shared sensations and memories. Cities and Humans invites us to find the links in these fragmented urban stories.

Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space explains that urban space is not just physical but a dynamic process shaped by social relationships and human life. A city is more than buildings; its meaning forms in the memories and experiences of its people. Cities are created, destroyed, and recreated continuously, and through these changes, life and memory go on.

Though the photos depict fragmented spaces, they connect shared stories across different landscapes. These cities exist at different times and places, but their traces of life meet again in our shared memories.

Photography, with its power to store and interpret memory, becomes a passage reflecting past, present, and future.

We hope this exhibition offers a new way to feel and think about the relationship between cities and humans.

Artistic Director of 2025 DAEJEON PHOTO

Kim Sungmin 


Participating Artists 

Weegee

Estate of Michael Wolf

Bookon Park

Tobias Titz

Zhang Xiao

Oli Kellett

Julie Hrudová

Javier Alvarez

Shinya Arimoto

Gohar Dashti

Morten Andersen

Seunggu Kim

Pierre & Florent

Gihun Noh

Hyojin Han

Donggeun Lee

Taedong Kim 

Main Exhibition Hall 1 

Exhibition Venue: Daejeon Artists' House

ⓒ 위지 Weegee

ⓒ 위지 Weegee

© 마이클 울프 Estate of Michael Wolf

© 마이클 울프 Estate of Michael Wolf

ⓒ 박부곤 Bookon Park

ⓒ 박부곤 Bookon Park

ⓒ 토비아스 티츠 Tobias Titz

ⓒ 토비아스 티츠 Tobias Titz

ⓒ 장 샤오 Zhang Xiao

ⓒ 장 샤오 Zhang Xiao

ⓒ 올리 켈렛 Oli Kellett

ⓒ 올리 켈렛 Oli Kellett

ⓒ 줄리 흐르도바 Julie Hrudová

ⓒ 줄리 흐르도바 Julie Hrudová

ⓒ 하비에르 알바레즈 Javier Alvarez

ⓒ 하비에르 알바레즈 Javier Alvarez

ⓒ 신야 아리모토 Shinya Arimoto

ⓒ 신야 아리모토 Shinya Arimoto

ⓒ 고하르 다시티 Gohar Dashti

ⓒ 고하르 다시티 Gohar Dashti

ⓒ 모르텐 앤더슨 Morten Andersen

ⓒ 모르텐 앤더슨 Morten Andersen

ⓒ 김승구 Seunggu Kim

ⓒ 김승구 Seunggu Kim

ⓒ 피에르와 플로렌 Pierre & Florent

ⓒ 피에르와 플로렌 Pierre & Florent


Main Exhibition Hall 2

Exhibition Venue: Daejeon Gallery 

ⓒ 노기훈 Gihun Noh

ⓒ 노기훈 Gihun Noh

ⓒ 한효진 Hyojin Han

ⓒ 한효진 Hyojin Han


Main Exhibition Hall 3

Exhibition Venue: Igong Gallery 

ⓒ 이동근 Donggeun Lee

ⓒ 이동근 Donggeun Lee

ⓒ 김태동 Taedong Kim

ⓒ 김태동 Taedong Kim