Seoul’s Han River Railway Bridge. March 2020. (courtesy Kim Bong-gyu)
When revisiting the dreary everyday sights of the pandemic era we lived through only a handful of years ago, it’s hard not to think back to what our own lives looked like back then — how we behaved on trains and at wedding halls, in hospital rooms and out on the street, and how it all made us feel. Now, a new photography exhibition captures what life looked like in Korea at a time when COVID-19 raged across the world, forcing us to avoid meeting one another and to always be on alert lest we contract the virus. Kim Bong-gyu’s “COVID-19,” a solo exhibit at GalleryIndex in Seoul’s Jongno District, revisits scenes from across Korean society during the pandemic, studying them as only a documentary photographer can. Kim presents 15 selected works taken during the more than three years of field reporting for the Hankyoreh between the first confirmed case of COVID-19 on Jan. 20, 2020, and the government’s declaration of the end of the pandemic on May 11, 2023. During that time, as a photojournalist, Kim traveled across Seoul and other parts of the country, documenting everyday life under the pandemic conditions.
Wedding hall in Seoul’s Sinchon. February 2020. (courtesy Kim Bong-gyu)
