The tension, fragility and aging of its paper, the rhythm and flow of its sequencing animated by the viewer’s eyes and hands and the possibility of it easily migrating across the globe are just some of the elements that make a photobook a “living” object. The publications in this exhibition exist as singular interpretations of the projects they stem from and, given the artistry and knowledge that permeates their design and making, they exist as “artistic objects” alongside the prints and sculptural objects with which they share this gallery’s space.
Shifting from the solitary practice of leafing through a book’s pages to the more collective viewing of a print will hopefully bring about unexpected dynamics and conversations between the different artworks. The notes accompanying each artwork in the exhibition invite visitors to explore how the artist’s project or the book’s editorial vision engages with the biennale’s overarching themes of interconnection, reciprocity and care between human and non-human life on Earth and beyond. (Below: featured international artists)
The 2025 Daegu Photo Biennale, themed 'Life', features a special exhibition by Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi.
Known for her soft, luminous color palette, KAWAUCHI has, since the beginning of her career, captured the mysteries and brilliance of life—its fragility and resilience—through a deeply poetic lens. Her gaze moves from delicate, everyday subjects such as flowers, animals, and family to the vast temporal forces of nature, including volcanoes and glaciers. This sensitivity, which connects all her subjects through a unifying sense of vitality, is the core of her photographic world.
This special exhibition builds on works first presented at Photo Days (Paris, 2023), newly adapted to the spatial context of the Biennale.
In 1866, Gustave Courbet painted The Origin of the World, a strikingly realistic depiction of the female genitalia. Commissioned by Khalil Bey, a collector and diplomat Ottoman of Egyptian descent, the painting was kept hidden behind a curtain for decades. Today, it hangs openly on the walls of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, no longer viewed as pornography but celebrated for its boldness and modernity in the history of painting. This exhibition takes its cue from that single image—a work that continues to raise uncomfortable but essential questions. What are we allowed to see? What have we long been taught to look away from? And who decides? While male bodies have been consistently represented in art and public space, the female body—particularly the vulva—has often been idealized, censored, or erased altogether.
The exhibition confronts this long history of visual repression. Through acts of concealment, metaphor, exposure, and confrontation, the works on view explore how the depiction of the body—especially the female sex—has served as a battleground for power, desire, and representation. To reveal what has long been hidden is not merely a gesture of liberation, but a challenge to inherited norms and visual codes. Today, the female body is no longer seen as something to be hidden, but as a subject that demands the right to be shown and seen on its own terms. The depiction of the vulva becomes not just a matter of visibility, but a declaration of agency, a redefinition of eroticism, and a provocation to rethink the politics of the gaze. From the place where life begins, a new world may emerge. This is where the exhibition begins.
