Helen Deng

    deng.hneng@gmail.com

    KOREAN graphic designer Ahn Sang-soo is best known for his typography. The 60-year-old art professor of Hongik University developed the first “out-of-frame” Hangul typeface, and is known as the leader of Hangul’s type revolution. He is the first Korean member of AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale). Theme magazine calls him “the most innovative designer in Korea today.”

    But when an Italian publishing house asked him to publish a 16-page artwork collection two years ago, he did not present his famous “Ahn Sang Soo Font” (which he made in 1985). Instead, he presented 16 pages of photos from people who made the same gesture: covering one eye.

    “The ‘One Eye’ series has become the main project of my career,” said Ahn at the OCT Art & Design Gallery, where he is launching the first gallery show of his “One Eye” series Saturday. He has been showing the photos on his blog www.sszhn.com.

    Ahn said he did the project “just for fun.” The first photo is a self-portrait which was published as a magazine cover in the Bogoseo/Bogoseo in 1988. In it, he covered one eye with his hand and covered his mouth with another hand. He found that besides facial expressions, he could express himself in this way which created a special effect.

    Now when Ahn takes similar photos, he asks participants who he meets by chance to pose in the same way. At the very beginning, he takes photos for pleasure and did not expect any outcome. Gradually, in the process of taking photos, Ahn has a growing feeling. He feels that people are relating this gesture with their experience. In the past two decades, he’s taken 30,000 “One Eye” photos.

    “For the last 20 years, this project which originally had no purpose, while brewing and fermenting over a long time, has become an interpersonal project that can endow lives with power and share positive emotions today,” says curator Wang Xu.

    Each photo tells a story. For Ahn, the most unforgettable memory is about Australian graphic designer Leslie Mason.

    “I met Mason in Berlin in 2005 and took a ‘One Eye’ photo of him. Five years later, I met him again in Istanbul. He’s very old and sick and in a wheel chair and had completely forgotten me. But when I gave him a ‘One Eye’ gesture, he recognized me instantly! So I took a ‘One Eye’ photo of him again.”

    The next day, Mason did not join the group tour. His wife, who was touring a market with Ahn and other friends, returned to her hotel room after receiving a phone call. It turned out that Mason had passed away that day. “I took the last photo of him,” Ahn said as his eyes turned red.

    Ahn received e-mails from all over the world asking for the meaning of “One Eye.” Ahn would not give an answer. He said he did it purely “for fun,” but many young Korean designers tried to link the “One Eye” series to Ahn’s typography, sometimes in a far-fetched way. “It’s not my intention. It’s their understanding,” Ahn said, smiling.

    But it’s hard to say that Ahn’s photography is not affected by his typography, which, according to him, is the “base of design sense and base of culture.”

    “If literature is the content of culture, typeface is its form,” he concluded.