Ren
I spent years trying to be invisible. The camera made it useful.
Where it started
Ren was born in Seoul to a Korean father and a Japanese mother and moved between the two cities every few years. In each place he was the kid from the other one.
What they wanted
He wanted to belong somewhere. He tried out for a boy band in Seoul at seventeen and made it to the final round.
The wall
The label told him he did not look Korean enough. A Tokyo agency told him a month later he did not look Japanese enough.
The moment it clicked
He bought a used film camera with the money from a part-time job and walked Shibuya crossing at night for weeks. Nobody noticed him, and everyone in the photos looked like they belonged exactly where they were standing. He did not need to fit a mold. He needed a way to show people as they are.
The new path
He started photographing strangers in Shibuya and posting one portrait a night with the person's own words under it.
The hard part
His first exhibition sold one print, to his mother.
The breakthrough
A magazine in Seoul ran the series as a twelve-page feature, and the same Tokyo agency that turned him down hired him to shoot its campaigns.
Today
Ren shoots fashion and portraits between Tokyo and Seoul. He still walks the crossing most nights with the film camera, and the Shibuya frame is the one he wears to every shoot.
This is Ren's locked face. Every photo and video of his starts from it, so his look stays the same everywhere his appears.
Aiko
Kenji
Mei