In Conversation: Park Chan-wook

I met Park Chan-wook on the day On a Calm Morning – the filmmaker’s first European photography exhibition – opened at Lee Ufan Arles. Outside, photographers were braving the heat to pound through the streets of Arles as the opening week of Rencontres de la Photographie gathered pace. The air is hot, the noise persistent. But, inside the foundation established by the pioneering Korean conceptual artist, Park was absorbed in a Lee Ufan monograph, studying the meditative paintings of his elder. It was a fitting scene. Before our conversation had even begun, Park was engaged in the practice that has defined his career: looking carefully and with extraordinary attention.

Park is rarely thought of as a photographer. Yet, alongside four decades of filmmaking, he has maintained an equally serious photographic practice, one that has largely remained outside of public view. As the director of Oldboy (2003), The Handmaiden (2016) and Decision to Leave (2022), he is one of the defining filmmakers of contemporary cinema, forging a unique visual language from Korean cultural traditions, European classical music, Gothic melodrama and the formal precision of Hollywood thrillers. But On a Calm Morning offers a distinct counterpart, revealing that the sensibility underpinning his films was formed long before Park ever stepped behind a movie camera.

Park Chan-wook, On a Quiet Morning, 2026 (installation view, Lee Ufan Arles) © David GIANCATARINA. Courtesy the artist and Lee Ufan Arles

As Park tells me, still photography captivated him before cinema. As a child, he aspired to become a painter, while photographs taken by his architect father first taught him that a camera could refract reality, even as it recorded it. At university, his refusal to follow the prevailing documentary politics of the day – choosing instead to photograph overlooked everyday objects rather than the socially engaged subjects favoured by his peers – led to his exclusion from an early group exhibition, reinforcing an instinct to pursue his own visual language rather than someone else’s. He reflects on meeting William Eggleston, whose photographs affirmed his belief that the extraordinary resides within the ordinary, and recalls Alejandro Jodorowsky’s warning, delivered shortly after Oldboy’s breakthrough success, that Hollywood would bring not only international acclaim but hardship.

What emerges is not the story of a filmmaker who also makes photographs, but of an artist whose cinema, photography and painting all spring from the same discipline: learning how to see.

The Art Journal: I’m interested in your childhood. I read that you dreamt of becoming a painter, but I’d like to know when you first came into possession of a camera. Were you initially more interested in still or moving images? Did your family have a camera that you began using yourself?

Park Chan-wook: I think I was more attracted to still photography than moving images. My interest goes back a very long way, even to before I started primary school, because my father took many photographs of me and my younger brother.

My father was an architect, an amateur painter and an amateur photographer. He was very interested in photography, so he took many pictures of us.

I can remember particular moments when he took a photograph. What really struck me was that, when I later saw the developed photograph, it looked completely different from how I remembered the moment. Of course, I remembered everything in colour, while the photograph was in black and white. But that was not the only difference. Without colour, you could see the forms more clearly; they became stronger.

I did not consciously understand that as a child, but I knew the image was different from the moment I remembered. Because my father was an architect, I think he was also very focused on composition: the relationship between people and buildings, for example, or between people and their surroundings.

He also took many colour photographs and projected them as slides. I think that was the beginning of my encounter with the relationship between still photography and cinema. He projected the slides onto a white piece of cloth. You would see one photograph and then, when the slide changed, another photograph would appear. Because they were projected in a dark room, the experience was closely related to being in a cinema.

The Art Journal: Were there films you watched when you were young that left a deep impression on you? Are there any that you still return to as an adult?

Park Chan-wook: Perhaps Brief Encounter. It is a British film in black and white, and I first saw it on television.

I remember that it was a film my parents had seen at the cinema when they were dating, before they married. There was a television programme announcing that it would be broadcast one weekend, so I watched it.

Of course, I was a child, so I did not understand the hardship of separation or all the difficulties connected with love. But there was something about it that was both beautiful and very sad, even though I could not fully understand that feeling. There is also the decision to live. I think the film inspired me a little in making that decision.

Park Chan-wook, The Handmaiden, 2017 (film still)

The Art Journal: Brief Encounter was shot very close to where I grew up in the north of England, so I’m very happy to hear that answer. It’s wonderful to think that the film travelled all the way to Korea.

You’ve now made 17 films. I spoke to Valérie outside, and she said Decision to Leave was her favourite. Personally, I would choose The Handmaiden. Is there one film you have made that feels particularly important to you, or that you consider your best? If you could save only one of your films, which would it be?

Park Chan-wook: Night Fishing.

All my films are very precious to me and, at the same time, they all embarrass me. But the one I am least ashamed of – if I can put it that way – is the short film Night Fishing. Sometimes I think it is quite well made, or that it contains some very good scenes. I made it with my brother.

The Art Journal: It was shot on an iPhone, wasn’t it?

Park Chan-wook: Yes. I think it was one of the first films shot on an iPhone. The quality and resolution of the image had to be incorporated into the design of the film. I think it is very typically Korean, but at the same time quite universal. It also has a spiritual dimension.

I also received my biggest award for that short film: the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. Nan Goldin was president of the jury, so that was very significant to me.

The Art Journal: It strikes me that you have developed a special relationship with France. The Cannes Film Festival supported your earliest films and Cannes is close to Arles. Have you visited Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles before? And who are the photographers, beyond Nan Goldin, whom you particularly admire?

Park Chan-wook: I had already visited Arles because of Van Gogh, but never for the photography festival. But many photographers have meant a great deal to me.

Early on, I was very attracted to the work of William Eggleston. I shot my film Stoker in Nashville, and the director Harmony Korine lives there. He became a friend and told me that one of his friends was William Eggleston, who lived not far from Nashville in Memphis. After filming Stoker, I bought a bottle of cognac and went to visit him. He showed me his contact sheets, his best prints and his Leica camera collection.

When you see his dye-transfer prints in person, they are truly wonderful. The problem with seeing them in an exhibition is that there is usually glass over them, which creates reflections. You are not necessarily seeing them under the best conditions. But when you encounter the physical prints without that interference, their beauty is extraordinary.

The Art Journal: I was speaking to Valérie Duponchelle, the curator, about On a Calm Morning, the title of your exhibition in Arles. She said there was initially some disagreement over it. Could you talk me through your response to the title and why you think it works for the exhibition?

Park Chan-wook: I was initially a little against it because “the Land of the Morning Calm” is an expression that is often used to represent Korea abroad. I thought it had been used too much. And, of course, I cannot represent the whole of Korea by myself. So, at first, I was a little against the title.

The Art Journal: When I saw the exhibition earlier, the photographs seemed distinctly yours. It’s difficult to describe, but, as someone who has watched your films, I could immediately feel that the photographs had been made by you. You clearly have a very strong eye and are able to express something of your character through imagery.

Do you think that ability to understand images comes naturally, or can anyone learn to become an artist? Clearly, people can improve their eye by looking at art and training themselves, but do you think there is also an innate ability?

Park Chan-wook: I don’t know whether people are born with an eye for looking at things. Perhaps a very small number of people are. But I think it is mainly the result of education, effort and the interest you take in things.

It also depends on the opportunities that arise in your life. Once you become interested in something, what matters is how much effort you put into it. I think that is what makes the difference.

The most important thing is to have your own voice and your own point of view, without being influenced by what other people think or tell you. You have to hold on to what you want to do and what you want to express.

Park Chan-wook, On a Quiet Morning, 2026 (installation view, Lee Ufan Arles) © David GIANCATARINA. Courtesy the artist and Lee Ufan Arles

When I first began taking photographs, I belonged to the photography club at university. At that time, the student movement in Korea was very left-wing, much like the movements of 1968 in France and elsewhere in Europe. The prevailing idea was that you should photograph poor people, take pictures in the streets and depict cities and the people who were suffering or struggling within them.

But I was more interested in something like a plant in a pot. I was more interested in objects than in actual people – an object that had simply been left in a corner, for example.

I remember that the senior students were very critical of me. They said I should not take photographs of things like that, and they tried to exclude me from a group exhibition. But I continued working in my own way. I think the photographs I took then look very much like the photographs I take now.

The Art Journal: If you could invite five artists, alive or dead, to a dinner party, whom would you invite, and what would you serve them?

Park Chan-wook: First, I would invite Bach and Beethoven. One thing they had in common was that they both appreciated coffee. They were aficionados, so I would serve them hand-dripped specialty coffee.

The third would be Franz Kafka. I don’t know what I would serve him. Perhaps alcohol. I don’t know whether he liked alcohol, but rather than wine, I would choose whisky – perhaps a single malt.

The fourth would be the late Korean director Kim Ki-young. During my first year at university, I watched one of his films and realised how good his work was. I realised that it was possible to make such crazy films in Korea – that it was possible to make good films in Korea.

I had opportunities to see him from time to time, but I always avoided him. I watched him from a distance because I did not have the courage to speak to him. I was afraid that I might be disappointed by the person. But now I am ready, and I would like to meet him, if that were possible. I would serve him naengmyeon, a Korean cold-noodle dish that I particularly enjoy.

The fifth would be Dmitri Shostakovich. There is a book called Testimony, and there is a great deal of debate over whether what it contains is true. I would want to ask him about that. I would serve him iced vodka, because I understand that he particularly enjoyed it.

The Art Journal: My final question concerns Oldboy. It won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2004, 22 years ago, and the film catapulted you to international fame. Imagine I could bring into this room the director who had just made Oldboy. What would you say to that younger version of yourself, as he was about to enter that period of his life?

Park Chan-wook: Around that time, Alejandro Jodorowsky visited Korea. He is known for being something like a fortune teller. He asked me what I wanted to know about my future.

After the success of Oldboy, I had been invited to make films in the United States, so I asked him whether I should go or remain in Korea.

He said, “Yes, you can go. You will have great success, but you must also understand that you will suffer a great deal. You have to prepare yourself. You must be ready.”

Thinking about it now, that is something anybody could say to anybody. But what I would tell my younger self today is: you must prepare yourself more. You must be more ready.