Home
An industrial landscape reappears on a long-familiar path
Choi Yeol’s work begins with the act of walking through Namdong Industrial Complex in Incheon once again. Once seen only in passing through a bus window, the industrial district no longer remains a familiar background after many years have passed. The noise of dump trucks, drifting dust, and unnamed industrial structures first appear as a strange landscape, yet they do not feel entirely distant.
A quiet sense of memory lingers there. Rather than looking at factories as cold, indifferent objects, Choi yeol observes them slowly, almost as if encountering someone from the past by chance. In his photographs, the industrial complex shifts from a place one simply passes through into a landscape that asks to be stayed with. Photography becomes a way of holding the space between unfamiliarity and intimacy.
How does a factory become a form?
Choi Yeol does not see factories merely as industrial facilities. He follows the changing expressions of the complex according to time, distance, direction, and atmosphere, searching for the hidden structures and rhythms within it. At first, his gaze stays close to the objects at eye level. Gradually, however, it expands toward a wider and higher point of view.
Seen again from this perspective, the industrial complex reveals more colors and forms than expected. Walls, roofs, pipes, and structural elements connect as lines, and those lines gather into planes, creating a new order within the frame. In Choi Yeol’s photographs, the factory is both a functional site and an abstract landscape. It remains a real place, yet within the image, it becomes a scene with a different weight and rhythm.
Photography makes a real place quietly unfamiliar
Behind Choi Yeol’s path into photography lies a childhood memory and a series of questions about life. A documentary photo book he encountered by chance brought back memories of his family and left him with questions about life, death, and existence. Photography became a tool through which he could hold onto those questions and meet the world again.
This sensibility continues in his landscape photography. His work does not remain within simple documentation. Although it begins from real places, the landscape seems to step slightly away from reality. The industrial structures of Namdong Industrial Complex carry traces of a specific location, yet they also appear like fragments of an unfamiliar city. Through photography, Choi yeol looks at the moment when the familiar world begins to shift.
An image that feels both strange and old
In Choi Yeol’s work, the industrial complex is no longer a place to pass by. It becomes a site where memory resurfaces, and where lines and planes form a new visual order. The artist photographs each factory as if setting it upright again, slowly opening up an industrial landscape we thought we already knew.
That is why Choi Yeol’s photographs leave behind a subtle warmth, even before cold structures. We may think we know what an industrial complex looks like, but in front of his images, we begin to see it as if for the first time. Function and structure, memory and sensation, reality and imagination quietly overlap. Within that space, Choi Yeol reconstructs the industrial landscape through his own gaze.
To discover more works by Choi yeol:
🌐 Visit the artist’s website
📸 See more works on Instagram
