In the end, photographs have to be seen in person. An image that slides past on a screen and a single print hanging in a gallery run on different time. At four museums this May, works that hold different kinds of light are waiting.
Spring is short, so museums get busy. Photographers gather their ways of seeing in one place, and May is the month for us to walk slowly between them. Four exhibitions running at the same time: home, faces, the city, and the images a camera makes.
When a Home Becomes a Place the Heart Leans On
Seoul Photo Festival 2026 〈Come Back Home〉 is on at the Photography Seoul Museum of Art, from April 9 to June 14. The word "home" holds many layers. A place to live, and the time and relationships that pile up on top of it. This exhibition asks how photography looks into those layers.
Follow the eyes of the many artists here, and home stops being a building. It becomes a place where someone's heart has come to rest. A single doorknob, a relief carved into a wall, traces behind a closed shutter. The show gathers moments when familiar things turn strange again.
Seeing the Time Stacked on a Face
〈Shining Faces: From Icons to Us〉, the opening exhibition of the Gyeonggi Center for Photography (GCP), runs from March 28 to August 9. What does it mean to look at a person's face? This show looks past expressions, at the time and memories layered on a face.
From icons to us: that distance is shorter than you'd think. The way we remember someone, the way a person's image gets made. Walking through it, you realize again that a portrait isn't just a likeness. It's a vessel that holds the thickness of a life.
The Other Side of the Paris We Knew
〈Contemporary French Photography: Paris, Invisible Paris〉 is at the Sungkok Art Museum from April 3 to July 26. Paris as a tourist destination is all too familiar. Glamorous cafés, the Eiffel Tower, the bridges over the Seine. The Paris we picture mostly stays frozen inside that view.
This exhibition brings out the Paris hidden behind that familiarity. Organized with Alain Sayag, former head of photography at the Centre Pompidou, it lays a new texture over the city we thought we knew, through photography, video and other forms. It reminds you how partial it is to "know" a city.
When Photography Becomes Interpretation, Not a Tool
Choi Ral-la's solo exhibition runs from June through August at House of Photography Seoul. Where photography meets painting, intense color and figures fill the frame. This is work that treats the camera as a means of interpretation, not just a recording device.
Figures set against strong color backgrounds, deliberately soft focus, compositions arranged like paintings. All of it asks us again what the medium of photography can make, and how far it can go beyond record.
Four Places, One Month
- ● Seoul Photo Festival 2026 〈Come Back Home〉: Photography Seoul Museum of Art · 4.9 – 6.14
- ● GCP opening exhibition 〈Shining Faces〉: Gyeonggi Center for Photography · 3.28 – 8.9
- ● 〈Paris, Invisible Paris〉: Sungkok Art Museum · 4.3 – 7.26
- ● Choi Ral-la solo exhibition: House of Photography Seoul · June – August
Four museums, four ways of seeing. You can catch them all on a single weekend in May. Spring is short, so don't put it off. On the way to see photographs, that's the thing we forget most often.
