JUUN LEE: FROM KID TO ADULESCENT

[cotxpaxi.livejournal.com]

Don't grow up, it's a trap. MUTZINE's Editor-In-Chief (@gissella.info) talks growing pains with Juun Lee (@juunli), a 3rd year Chemical Engineering student, former street fashion photographer, and co-founder of emerging streetwear label and social collective Adulescent. / Photos by Juun Lee & Alex Finch

You were active as a street fashion photographer. How did you fall into that?
Juun: My mother is interested in fashion and around 3 years ago while I was serving in the military she bought me books like The Sartorialist. After the military I resumed college for a semester and then took a break and went to Vancouver with the intent to study English for six months. During my last month in Vancouver I decided that I also had to visit Los Angeles and New York. I got to New York just in time for New York Fashion Week and I was really interested in seeing what it was all about. On the first day I saw Nick Wooster and I thought that this was a really great chance so I bought a camera and started shooting 4 days in a row.

Were you by yourself? Or did you meet up with other Korean street fashion photographers?
Juun: Yeah, I was by myself. But I saw some famous Korean photographers guys and I approached HB Nam to say that I was his fan. He’s actually the first Korean street photographer to become well known, back in 2011. He’s been featured in some Korean reality tv shows, he released a book and it really influenced others to get into street fashion photography too.

So what happened next?
Juun: I came back to Korea on October 2014 and I still had around 5 months before the following semester started, so I sent emails to some Korean fashion magazines. Camscon, a digital street fashion platform recruited me as a full time photographer. I started shooting for them the following week.

That escalated quickly!
Juun: Yeah, I really had absolutely no experience prior to shooting at New York Fashion Week. My father likes photography though, it’s his main hobby. He has alot of cameras and I received one from him to start shooting in Seoul.



How was it becoming part of the street fashion photography community in Seoul?
Juun: When I first came out to shoot in Sinsa I didn’t have any fellow photographer friends. But after I became friendly with one, he introduced me to the others. Everyone was surprised when I started going out shooting here in Seoul because for a rookie I had the best gear.

Was it difficult to maintain your own style when there were so many others practicing street fashion photography too?
Juun: It was really hard. These days there’s around ten photographers shooting in Sinsa when it gets really busy, when the weather is nice. And actually I felt bored about how it works. We would stand in the same spot for 5 hours and wait for fashionable people to pass by. There’s alot of fashionable people of course, but we would look for those who are extraordinary and those would come by once or twice a day. I would do it 6 days a week. It was exhausting and I questioned what I was doing so I started doing my own kind of photography off the street.


So being a street fashion photographer isn’t exciting anymore?
Juun: It’s exciting. Meeting new people is exciting, but I came to realize that it wasn’t for me. I wanted to take special photos, but when that special subject appeared we all shot them. We don’t get alot of time to shoot the person. When I’m taking a photo someone else is waiting to take their photo right after. We surround the person and it made me feel uncomfortable because maybe the person being photographed would feel a bit burdened to be in this sort of mechanical system where everyone takes their photo one after another.

Also I only use the ‘one-shot’ strategy where I only take a single shot every time I press the shutter button. If I were to take more than twenty shots in burst mode, it’s up to chance. Of course i’ll get a good shot. But I prefer taking just two or three and picking the best from there, it makes the process more authentic for me.

In New York City you can stand in the street and take a photo of anybody passing by without asking for permission, but not in Korea due to certain laws that restrict that...
Juun: Yeah that’s right. That's why the most common method in Korea is to just ask the model to stand and then you take a photo. But actually there’s also photographers who take photos of the models walkingto replicate the candid style of street photography in other countries. It’s really awkward to stage all of that in my opinion. The process of asking them to walk a certain way and pretending to be natural and candid, it’s not my style.

--

So Juun, you don't do street photos anymore. Tell us about how your fashion label Adulescent came about!
Juun: Adulescent was launched on July 1, 2015, after 6 months of planning. I have a friend in university who’s a bit older than me. We talked alot and decided that we wanted to do something. We weren’t sure what, but just something. You know in Korea many young people are restricted by the environment, they can’t do what they want. So at first we thought of spreading the message of don’t grow up, just do what you want. We thought about how to spread the message and we chose to start a clothing brand with that message as the brand identity.

This message is really important for both of us because my major is Chemical Engineering and I really don’t like it. We both had other ideas about what we want to do but in Korea there are not many people who know what they want. In Korea we just go to school and study to get into university and once we get into university we don’t know what we want. We choose majors not based on true interests but just as safe bets for the future. I mean I chose Chemical Engineering only because my test scores were high enough for it.



Is changing majors an option?
Juun: It’s looked down on. And that’s something I think needs to change, even if you reach thirty or fourty years old you’re not too old to find a new path.

Alright, you had an idea but how did you make it happen?
Juun: I don’t have experience in this, but I have many friends in the fashion field now who gave me guidance and support. I have friends who run their own brands, do modeling and do photography. Without them I wouldn’t have been able to start Adulescent.

read more at the source!
plus bonus street photography from SFW FW15!


SOURCE: MUTZINE
hey omona! do you like your current area of study?

Comments

[petecarl.livejournal.com]

I identify with the go to school to get good grades to get into a good college to get into a good major to secure a good job and now i'm in my twenties and dropped out cause i didn't know what do with myself. now on that path to figure it out, but it's difficult when you're still being pushed by your parents and other "proper" older adults into doing what they want and then it just restarts the whole cycle. very hard to do what you want to do when you don't know what you want to do, so they try to tell you what you want to do, and then no one's happy. but i'm finding that i'm happier struggling to figure it out what it is i want to do than trying to pretend i'm happy when i'm not happy. adulescent is a good message.