Now 41, this South Korean photographer isn’t satisfied with being a commercial photographer. Dongwook-Lee wants instead to become an artist in the full sense of the word, creating tableaux inspired by his sister, a painter, as in the series WOZU (2011-2014), which means “Why?” in German.
He explains the meaning of his work WOZU: the vicious circle, between life and death, born from the water and returning to the water in one’s coffin, man is in constant search for his existence. As in the Tower of Babel, for example, which is a reminder of a great tree, and which seems to represent man’s challenge to God or his desperate struggle to climb the tower and rediscover his origins.
“My work,” says Dongwook Lee, “implicitly shows the long history of an internal combat, and of a journey to find man’s raison d’être, and the meaning of mankind.”