Hello! from Hannam: Couture Photography

Last week I went up north of the mountain, near the Gyongbokgung palace complex, to the Daelim Contemporary Art Museum. In the area surrounding the palace there are numerous galleries and museums both small and large, featuring just about any interest you may fancy, from natural history to photography. Showing at the Daelim was a small collection of photographs by Karl Lagerfeld. For those of you not familiar with this German, he is a fashion designer, artist and photographer based in Paris. He as the head designer and creative director for the fashion house Chanel. He also has his own label fashion house, as well as the Italian house Fendi.

While working as head fashion designer and creative director for Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld has expressed his artistic spirit in various sectors from photography to publishing and film. The exhibition, entitled "Work in Progress", was a nice selection of his ability as a photographer covering a wide range of genres from portraits to architecture and scenery. I especially liked his work with subjects other than models, as I don't really need to go to a museum to view fashion photography when I can simply open a magazine.

For the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, the museum was unusually busy. Koreans do love their designer labels, especially Chanel, and I'm sure the installation of the photo booth used in the latest run of Chanel advertisements had something to do with it. Allowing guests the opportunity to have their picture taken in the prop used in a Chanel ad? A cause for drawing a quiet little frenzied crowd indeed!