Yang-Taro Baka-Taro

Seung-woo Yang
Yang-Taro Baka-Taro

Photographs: Seung-woo Yang

Publisher: Zen Foto Gallery

144 pages

Year: 2021

Comments: Hardcover, 20 x 20 cm.

Yang Seung-Woo, mainly known for serious photography projects like “Shinjuku Lost Child” about the darker corners of Tokyo’s Shinjuku district or “Last Cabaret” about the final days of a legendary cabaret club in Kabukicho, chooses himself as the subject of his latest book “Yang-Taro Baka-Taro”.

Centered around an episodic, autobiographical essay about his childhood memories back in Korea, Yang portrays himself in numerous humorous self-portraits and diary-like shots taken in Japan and on travels around the world. Despite the heavy use of self-ironic imagery and his inclusion of embarrassing anecdotes (e.g. being stung by a bee on the tip of his penis as a child), both text and photographs nonetheless form into an introspective, thoughtful piece of self-reflection that is as stimulating as it is enjoyable.

“It is often said that memories and early landscapes of childhood play an important role in the works we create. Therefore, forgetting one’s childhood is a serious matter for those who create art.
In other words, I am told that it is okay for me to be who I am, as a person who has never grown up. This work is about the landscapes of my childhood, as someone who cannot grow up.”
― Yang Seung-Woo