Cho Gi-Seok

Our 2022 begins with Veronica looking straight into our eyes, with a hypnotic intensity. For a magazine like this one, which has been working on a conscious representation of fashion for some time now, this is a cover that is, in its own way, historic.

For decades, the dream that only fashion photography helped to dream was a choreography of homogeneous bodies, designed by ideas of beauty always identical to themselves. And in general, when it comes to telling the story of people with disabilities, their image tends to oscillate between the usual two extremes, pietism and heroism. For normality, let alone fantasy, there simply seemed to be no room. Now the photographs of Korean artist Cho Gi-Seok change all that. The Veronica Yoko Plebani that you will find in these pages is in fact not only the extraordinary Paralympic athlete, the writer and the activist that many people know by now: she is, above all, the protagonist of a dreamlike and surreal fashion fable.

Born in 1992, Cho came to photography from graphic design and art direction, when he realized that the only way to convey the images he had in mind would be to make them himself: “I looked at millions of images online, and gradually I realized that none of them told what I was familiar with. At that point, I decided to work on an iconography that spoke of the new Korean identity, of the people around me, of my most intimate emotions. And at the same time, it would address the world.”

Having grown up with the internet, Cho (whose works are on show at the Fotografiska museum in New York until February 6) has always wandered through an infinite overabundance of images, which he does not find paralyzing, on the contrary: like other designers of the latest generations – Demna or Alessandro Michele – he is perfectly aware that a decisive part of the contemporary creative process lies in establishing unexpected connections. That’s why in his images elements of Korean tradition such as thehanbok (a typical costume) or tal (theatrical or ritual masks) coexist without jolts with traits of avant-garde design, butterflies fly in digital ecosystems, or the same face, at the same time, is marked by a smile and tears.