In late 1997, I quit a job in New York working for an eccentric man from Texas who taught me how to do research for him on everything from stock market futures to precious metals and oil. Not what I was born to do in this world.
I had long had a secret desire to live in Paris, the land of Jean Valjean and Antoine Doinel. So in the spring of 1998, I arrived in Paris with two suitcases and my life savings (which would give me a year…if I were to live like Mahatma Gandhi). Here, I would become a photographer again. I needed to see if I had any more juice left to frame good pictures in the viewfinder and make them mine.
In Paris, I would not be Korean, nor American. I’d just be a foreigner, roaming the streets aimlessly at night, looking for fleeting fragments of beautiful light and soulful encounters with kindred spirits.
More than 20 years have already passed. I think it is time to make a book about this very long journey…a journey through the heart of la nuit parisienne.