Miru Kim's 'Naked City Spleen'

One of my favourite things about 2011 has been discovering the website TED.com; I could write a whole separate blog extolling the virtues of this website and what I've learnt from it, but rather than wax lyrical I'll just say that if you haven't heard of it, check it out. 

One of the first videos that I watched on TED was a lecture by photographer Miru Kim on what inspired her project 'Naked City Spleen', the thinking as well as the practicalities behind it. I have been meaning to write about it for months as her stunning photography and the guts which she has to take such shots really impressed me...

Raised in South Korea, Kim moved to New York in 1999 and was originally studying medicine when her fascination with the abandoned and desolate areas of the city took root. Kim likens the complicated structure and vast underground system of New York as akin to a living organism, one which she felt compelled to dissect and explore on her own terms. Encouraged through meeting like-minded people known as 'guerilla historians' she went from initally exploring the underground subway system of the city, to discovering other urban ruins such as abandoned factories, hospitals and aqua ducts. Compelled to document these dilapidated structures before their inevitable demolition she began to photograph them... 

             Glenwood Power Plant, Yonkers

Wanting to portray these lonely spaces as inhabited Kim herself models in the pictures, play-acting an imp-like creature who dwells in the ruins. She poses nude in these images in order to avoid any limiting sense of cultural tie or period in time. 

          

          Freedom Tunnel, New York

The result is a series of achingly beautiful photographs which are not only a valuable documentation of our cities forgotten territories but also an unsettling reminder of how soon man-made structures can fall into disarray... Kim states the project gave her a strong understanding of: "how fragile our sense of security is and how vulnerable people truly are." 

Naked City Spleen reminds me of my favourite quote from Virginia Woolf:

"We are only lightly covered in buttoned cloth; 

and beneath these pavements are shells, bones and silence..."

The project is not limited to the deserted realms of New York, but many other American cities as well as Paris, London and Istanbul. I really admire her tenacity to delve unaccompanied into these desolate places, transforming dilapidated structures into a playground-like realm of her own.

Below are a few more of my favoruite shots...

                             Michigan Central Station, Detroit

                                           Richmond Power Station, Philadelphia

                                      Zeyrek Cistern, Istanbul

    Manhattan Bridge, New York