Jeju love affair

An article on the life and work of photographer Kim Young-gap, who spent the last ten years of his life submerging himself into the hidden beauty of Korea’s southern island. Kim died of Lou Gehrig’s disease in 2005.

I visited a gallery set up in his name on the island in 2006. His love of the island and his devotion to his craft shined through in every single image.

He would spend days searching for the perfect shot and once he saw the image he was looking for he would set up his camera and wait, returning to the same exact place day after day waiting for the wind to push the clouds into frame, the sun to give the perfect light, for the colors to be palpable and full.

He spent the last ten years of his life walking through the mid-mountain ranges waiting to find the sublime. The tangerine famers that lived in the rural areas of his search did not know what to think of him. So alien he seemed with his long hair, his camera, sitting in fields for days on end that they mistook him for being mentally ill or at the very least a beggar…