Where it began

Seoul, 1998. Before I could truly call anywhere home, my father's work carried us across the sea to Japan — and then, just as quietly, back again. Seoul International School became the first place I belonged, from junior kindergarten through the eighth grade.

It was a childhood full of sound. A music teacher placed a guitar in my hands, then a bass, then a pair of drumsticks; soon there was a band, a stage, and that strange, wonderful silence just before the first note. After school, the playground turned into a ballpark, and we played until the sky ran out of light.

Then, in the fifth grade, a deck of cards. I wandered from one magic shop to the next on my own, practicing the same card and coin sleights until they seemed to vanish into my hands. I taught them to friends. I carried them onto a stage. And somewhere in those hours, I learned something I still believe: that practice no one sees can become a wonder someone remembers.

Far from home

England arrived like winter. In a place where few had heard of Korea, I was the stranger in every room; I met racism before I met friends. There were nights I cried until sleep simply gave in. And every time home called, I told my mother I was fine — so that at least one of us could rest.

But seasons turn. Slowly, the magic I had practiced, the baseball I played and the music I made began to speak where my words could not. They became bridges — to people, to cultures, to a version of myself I had not yet met. The last three years were warm in a way the first could never have promised.

I left England with a quiet certainty that I could take root anywhere. Of all I have been given, that chapter remains among the most precious.

Encore

Another ocean, another beginning — and the same three companions. In Georgia, I played baseball with American friends and learned their culture not from books but from the dugout. I built a band with friends from the Korean student community, and for four years we filled rooms with sound. And whenever a stage appeared, magic followed me onto it.

Everything I loved was, in a sense, a gift for someone else — a laugh, a song, a moment of disbelief. Yet each time, something returned to me as well: a sense of accomplishment, a quiet pride, the feeling of having given something real.

Persistence

If I had to name the one thing that runs through all of it, it would be persistence.

Not the loud kind — the quiet, daily kind. Returning to the same chord, the same swing, the same sleight, long after the novelty fades. That habit, and a simple conviction that what I make should bring someone joy, is what eventually placed a camera in my hands. It led me to become a marketer who tells stories for others and builds campaigns meant to succeed — years of photographs, films, ads and designs, most of them made for someone else.

I still work that way. But this place is different. Here, I wanted to keep the things I love, the work I am proud of and the moments I hold dear — an honest record of the life I have lived so far.

Shot on film

This site was made the way film is made: slowly.

Film belongs to another time. It asks for patience to shoot, patience to develop, and here it gives back no color at all. But I have always believed that what feels old is often what is essential. A footballer is built on dribbling, passing and shooting; everything I create is built on its fundamentals — and those are what I hope you see first.

So there is no glossy, modern sheen here. It begins in black and white, where I began. And like me, it is still developing — slowly gathering color, sharpening its grain, finding its way toward the present.

L'Archive

L'ARCHIVE is a keepsake box. Nearly ten years of work, gathered and kept — the pieces I most wanted to share, and within them, traces of what I love and what I am still reaching for.

On the home page there is a rose that has not yet opened. It is said to carry hope and possibility, youth and beauty, shyness and confession. I recognize myself in it — standing at the edge of something, in that quiet, unguarded moment just before the bloom, and hopeful about everything still to come.

Thank you for finding your way here. May you leave with a little of that feeling, too.