YOUR EYES NEPAL

Min Hyunwoo's images convey that vivid sense of bliss you experience when you know that a moment will not last. You want to be present in it and prolong it, while being acutely aware that it cannot be held. The feeling a moment leaves behind when it’s gone lies at the heart of Hyunwoo’s photographic project.

Based in Seoul, Hyunwoo works with fashion brands including Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Moncler, alongside personal projects photographing friends and people he connects with. One such project, which has been featured by everyone from i-D Magazine to CNN, is ”We are going to live this summer”. In this photo series youths are playing in a lake, evoking a dream vision of summer.

To create the images and films presented here, Hyunwoo traveled to Dolpo, Nepal, in the summer of 2026, documenting the lives of his Tibetan friend’s family. The work continues his ongoing photo series ”Your eyes”, in which he explores the shape and symbolism of eyes.


”I think a photograph is a kind of poem, that reveals the photographer's attitude towards life.”


For Hyunwoo, photography goes beyond crafting beautiful images. It offers something more expansive: an opportunity to reflect on meaning and capture the emotions that the passing of time evokes.

“Something I often talk about is this: the image may turn out beautiful, but what truly matters is the feeling of longing.”

Longing is not exactly nostalgia. It’s not necessarily melancholic either, even if it can bear traces of both. When you long for something, you create an emotional bridge through time and space to something that is no longer there. With its ability to preserve a unique instant, photography creates that bridge to what has passed.

”I love light that carries a sense of longing, the kind that makes you want to hold onto a moment.”

Hyunwoo spends a lot of time meditating on what makes us stop and pause. He thinks the disappointment we often feel when our experience of beauty doesn’t match what we can photograph can get in the way of that first sense of wonder.


”Lately, I've been trying to respect that first instinct, the thought I had before I even picked up the camera, and just sit with it for a while instead. Ultimately, creating a meaningful photograph comes down to capturing what makes us stop in our tracks and nurturing that genuine connection.”


The real challenge for him lies in looking beyond the established boundaries of classical photography. He often asks himself how to “step outside fixed rules and how to combine design elements with a sense of vitality and soul”.


Hyunwoo never thought photography could be a career. In his home country, South Korea, there’s a strong social expectation for young people to study hard, work, and follow the rules. ”It was difficult to step outside of that”, he says. On top of that, even though he fell in love with photography early on, he didn’t think he had any talent for it.

A solo trip to India made his doubts disappear. The multitude of different ways of living he encountered there was an eye-opener, inspiring him to take the step towards pursuing what he actually wanted to do. He realized photography could be a way of being and doing things with others.

Apart from photography, Hyunwoo was into drawing when he was young. But the camera attracted him the most. “If I were drawing, I’d be alone in a room, in my own time”, he says. “But photography was something I could do and share with people: go outside, see nature, find what’s beautiful.”


Creating things together with others is important to him. It is what makes this medium uniquely attractive. He describes the bond photography creates between people as a kind of relational breathing. That connection brings clarity. When he feels it, the image can come into being.

His relationship with photography has shifted over the past two to three years. Working in the fashion industry for a long time made him reflect deeply on what it means to excel as a photographer. This has led to his “growing interest in documentary photography”, he says. It’s a development that has now brought him back to what first drew him to the craft: its potential to open up new ways of seeing and being with others.

”While fashion photography focuses heavily on visual aesthetics, my current work shares a spirit more affiliated with my early days as a photographer during that trip through India. It feels like a meaningful full circle.”

In the past, Hyunwoo shied away from over-planned, highly calculated photo shoots. Today, he blends spontaneous moments with designed elements, as this helps him uncover deeper meaning within visual forms. His ongoing project “Your eyes”, which recently took him to the Tibetan region of Dolpo in western Nepal, is a case in point.

“Your eyes” explores the symbolism and shape of eyes. It is also a study of different ways of seeing and what we are actually able to see. The trip turned out to be revelatory of where he feels he is right now, deepening his appreciation for the importance of genuine relationships with the people he photographs. For him, creating together is a way of striking a balance between aesthetics and meaning.

”I want to maintain a comfortable and welcoming environment, and converse naturally with people, so that everyone participating can create the photograph together with me. Ultimately, it’s about making sure our time together is meaningful.”