Hyun Ji Sim

I am interested in the cultural definition of beauty and its appearance in society. My work, “Girl A”, was inspired by this idea. I wrote on an online message board in search for mothers who wanted photos taken of their daughters. The girls were dressed up and posed according to their mother’s standard of beauty. If a girl took a pose that the mother did not consider “sweet”, the mother corrected the girl.

We have to pay attention to where standards of beauty come from: magazines, advertisements, and media made by society. Hence, these portraits are not just of girls, they reflect both their mother’s and society’s standards of beauty. In the photos, the girls stand neatly dressed in skirts. They are learning the standards of being a “woman”, even though they do not yet recognize it themselves. The girls are a kind of “commodity”, which fulfills the needs of the time and of society.

© Hyun Ji Sim