Last year Jina Lee, an illustrator from Seoul happened to see Eyes as Big as Plates at the Flora Fauna exhibition at the Gallery Factory in Seoul. Halvar from Sandnes made her want to be where he was, both mentally and physically.
Around that same time she had also decided to focus on living her own life, instead of illustrating other people’s stories which she had been doing for the past 30 years. Having a tumultuous teenager egged the change further and that’s how we all ended up in a mountain stream together.
These are “pams”, spiky buggers untouchable without gloves and perfect cover for our camera-shy model. © Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen This bugfree zone makes for a perfect studio space for this production. © Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen As well as Jina and the gallery team, our fellow villagers for the week are a totally joyous bunch from the Institute of Global Social Responsibility from the Seoul National University. May we urge you all to book your next holiday here . © Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen You will get to indulge in this…© Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen …and be embraced by the warmth of what everyone lovingly refer to as ‘mama’. © Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen Before the shoot, Jina told us more about herself while we enjoyed Deng Yooja Cha with the Korean opera Hūngbo-ga playing in the background. © Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen Who wants ice coffee? Jae Choul-Lee and Won Hwa-Park’s café is as of now our favourite in the whole world. Everything here was handmade with love by these two artisans. © Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen Jae Choul-Lee has a farm of ceramic pots where fermentation is underway on soy beans, chili, wine, Deng Yooja etc. © Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen Brewing here is soy bean paste © Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen Jina, second from the left, grew up in a house butted against a medium-sized mountain. Only when she went to Canada did she realise that having only lakes around her and no mountains made her restless. © Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen This mountain stream was not only a fitting location for Jina, but also cooling for the team on this hot summer’s day. © Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen She was brought up to think of water as something to be feared. Being photographed is not on top of the list of things she likes either, but as she explained to us; participating in this shoot was part of her mission ‘to forgive her stiff identity’. © Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen © Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen Once the armour was lifted, Jina described the full sensory experience with cooling water on her feet, the smell of chestnuts all around her and the sound of the stream spiced with camera shutter clicks as thoroughly enjoyable. © Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen Korean style cargo. © Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen Our two friends from yesterday were finally busy and not quite feeling up to the mountain top time we had planned. We had some delicious sugary tomatoes and a chat instead. Lovely! © Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen The party continued with a banquet of eels and enormous moths, the latter ones not for dinner.© Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen Taking bookings while cooking dinner for 50 – super mama for president! © Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen Good night from Mr bug © Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen
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Love love love it! Keep posting those daily notes, please!
I am wondering when the lovely book that was to be sent to those of us who contributed a certain amount to your kickstarter campaign might arrive.
Norma Johnson