Jeongmee Yoon

Jeongmee Yoon (born 1969) is a South Korean photographer. She received an MFA in photography, video, and related media from the School of Visual Arts in 2006, and is a professor of photography at Hongik University in Seoul, South Korea.[1][2]

Yoon's photography often focuses on human subjects posed within a densely-packed frame among their possessions.[2] Yoon has stated that "[t]his method shows my organization of subjects similar to the way in which museums categorize their inventories and display their collections."[3] As art critic Hyeyoung Shin observes, "Unlike a portrait photography, which focuses only [on] a person, [Yoon] provides environmental information surrounding the subject to contribute not only the visual content but also its form."[2]

Yoon's most notable photography series in this vein is the Pink and Blue Project, which Yoon began in 2005.[4] The Pink and Blue Project documents the blue and pink toys, clothing, books, and other objects collected by American and Korean children.[5][6][7] This project is regularly referenced by scholars studying gender and early childhood in a range of fields, including biology, educational psychology, and media studies.[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Another photography series, Space-Man-Space, depicts shopkeepers surrounded by the goods they sell, in tightly packed stalls and kiosks in Seoul's Insadong neighborhood.[2] Similarly, the Animal Companions photo series chronicles relationships between humans, their pets, and the homes they live in.[17]

In 2011, Yoon won the Grand Prize in Asian Art from the Sovereign Art Foundation for her work "Lauren and Carolyn and Their Pink & Purple Things."[3] Her work is included in the collections of the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress,[18] the Museum of Fine Arts Houston,[19][20] and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.[21][22]