Jae Kim is an ALT CITIZEN. I know him from my hometown of Leonia, NJ – but he’s done a lot of traveling. He is a photographer, fashion designer, motorcycle enthusiast, cook, adrenaline junky, and all around wild guy some some very bold tattoos. He’s fascinating to talk to and a really really nice guy. He’s already put out one photo book, Lost In Seattle, and plans to put out another more ambitious one documenting some time he spent in his native Korea.
RR: Alright J
JK: Hey hows it goin’
RR: Tell us about yourself. I know you better than the folks at home, so lets have a nice general description
JK: Jae Kim, 23, was born in Korea, raised in Queens. . . like the tri state area. You could say I’m a visual artist, main medium is photography. I want to focus on video stuff, but its mostly photo and print right now.
RR: How about some of your early work? I remember you had a clothing brand when you were in high school, tell us about it.
JK: Started in. . . probably. . . sophomore year of high school with Liz, my ex gf. We started a clothing brand: Batzu and Esanz. Esanz is short for Elizabeth Sanzari, her full name, and Batzu was kinda like her nickname she gave me. You’d probably have to ask her where she came from with the name, but I just liked the sound of it, the ring of it, so I just went with it… but obviously that [endeavor] ended when the relationship ended. We had to grow up and move separate ways, which is cool, we’re friends now- she lives pretty close actually…
but yeah, that was highschool..
RR: I remember that stuff, I also remember you were involved with some kind of hair company.
JK: Ahh right. You know Pam [Gonzalez]. She worked for a hair company called Fat Boy. It was a hair matte product or whatever and these guys were really cool. They were going on tour and they needed a photographer to capture what they were doing. . . teaching classes, spreading their culture. Kinda tryin’ to push their brand. So I went on tour with them to Dallas, Minneapolis, North Carolina… and we would have Sunday Sessions where we’d meet and they would style and cut someone’s hair, there’d be a get-together and I would take photos, kinda document that. That was like 3 years ago.
After that I decided I was kinda over New York, you know, I wanted to go somewhere else. So I decided super impulsively, sitting on that rooftop, my apartment rooftop a couple blocks from here – I was like “I need to go to Seattle” just like fuck it. I’ve got a friend out there who said I could stay on his couch so I just went. As soon as I landed I hated it. It was garbage, the people there… I stayed in Downtown Seattle, it felt like midtown, just trash, but it was a one-way ticket, so I had to stick it out and make the most of it. The kid who I was staying with was a dickhead, like a Microsoft tech bro, but I met him through the internet, like through mutual friends and we had some pretty neutral conversations…
So I started shooting polaroids, just to test it out. You know, he had a camera lying around so I was like hey why not take a couple shots. A couple shots ended up becoming like 500. .. so while I was out there I had to make a choice about whether I wanted to make this [photography] my career cause I was working in a studio and I didn’t really like the commercial aspects of photoshoots like fashion and editorials stuff. It felt inauthentic – no substance.
So after shooting all these polaroids I decided to put this book together as my first project out into the world. I hadn’t ever really shared my photography, so I put a 100 page book together, did a whole kickstarter campaign, raised like 5k – which was pretty dope, did a limited run of like 200. But looking back, I wish I never shot in polaroids. It felt like it cheapened the image. Now I feel like I want my work to be big. Having small little prints, I kinda lost all the details. I’m never really satisfied with whatever I put out… I mean I’m proud, don’t get me wrong. It took a year to get it all together and as soon as I dropped the book I went to Korea for 5 months September to February (2016)
RR: Wait so how long were you in Seattle?
JK: A month and a half
RR: So you came back and it took you a year to compile..
JK: Editing was a pain in the ass… I took a shit ton of acid, got some computer paper and double sided tape, taped the polaroids and just scanned it all in. Cigarette ash, foot prints, I didn’t care, creases, I didn’t care, I just kinda did it. You know, but like a year passed, the book came out and… Same process: I got sick of New York again. I had just gotten my Green Card and was like “I could leave the country if I want to” so I figured I’d go to Korea, where I was born. I hadn’t been there for 17 Years. Went there, spent 5 months and shot this book that I am currently editing down, hopefully I’ll be done in the next couple of months.
RR: Oh you shot a bunch of photos. It’s not gonna be Polaroid?
JK: Yeah I got a digital camera out there. Took like 20,000 photos that I need to edit down to like one hundred which is like “fffff.” And I’m so attached to these photos you know? How do you edit down from 20,000 to a hundred? But its just the process I kinda have to go through. But I’ve only been here since February and I’m already planning my next getaway. Next year I’m gonna take my motorcycle and spend a year out on the road and just kinda take photos, and this trip I wanna focus on film. I wanna come back with a full length documentary (1.5 to 2 hrs). You know how they do those typical cross country motorcycle trip diaries? I really don’t wanna focus on that, I wanna focus on cities and the way I interact with them. I wanna find the fringe. and the dirty scenes. The actual subcultures of every city I hit. Not the tourist attractions, not the shit you see in advertisements. I’m gonna get like 2 sheets of acid and call it Acid America. The intro is gonna be me taking a tab in different landscapes – it’ll be a montage of that
RR: Oh yeah, like shoot them all the same way – it’ll be like a slow motion dose with the background and perhaps your facial hair changing from frame to frame.
JK: Yeah man, I think that’d be pretty rad. And then a montage… (laughs) you know about my instagram posts where I urinate all over the bar bathrooms and give it a rating. I kinda wanna do that at the White House and Mt. Rushmore and Yellowstone Park, you know kinda marking my territory like a dog. So basically, Dogging around america.
RR: Stickin’ your nose in all the cities butts..
JK: Pickin’ at garbage and whatever. . . and just kinda capturing that. I wanna see where that’ll take me.
RR: Yeah dude
JK: And I might not come back, you never know, it might be a 2 year thing, it might be a 5 year thing, it might be like never… I might never come back to New York. Don’t get me wrong, I love this place, it’s my home base, full of friends and loved ones. . . I’m kind of in limbo right now. Editing, getting this book done, trying to find a publisher and distribution, but also planning for my year long trip. It’s a hustle lol.
RR: I’m glad we caught you at this uh juncture (laughs)
JK: There’s also a sociopolitical statement to be made too. It’s not just me going out enjoying America, sightseeing and being a tourist. I’m a tattooed Asian-American in the midwest or like Alabama somewhere, Tennessee, etc. You know? How are they gonna [react to] me? How am I gonna interact with people that probably haven’t seen a guy like me before?
RR: Maybe some people will surprise you [with their “tolerance and acceptance”]
JK: Maybe SOME, but yeah I wanna see how that works. Plus there’s all the stuff with the cops and the election and “Donald Trump is close to winning” everywhere. [It’s a pretty volatile situation]
RR: “Whoa” (as if to say, “THAT hadn’t even occurred to me”)
JK: I think it will be a good time to travel America. Maybe if I was a white guy on a motorcycle no one would look at me twice, but I imagine that I will be actually interacting with these people. But maybe it will be hostile and I’ll have to get on my bike and go, then again, it might just be me talking to people like human beings sharing my story and vice versa. I don’t have a solid plan, it’s either the northern perimeter and then kick it in Mexico for a bit or southern perimeter and kick it in Mexico, I just wanna hang out y’kn. It’s gonna be a fuckin’ wild ride and uh, I’m excited.
Also, I can’t really put Korea on the back burner. It’s a fuckin’ huge body of work that I have to work on, I have to be proud of it…
RR: I assume you want to get this done care of before you go on your trip.
JK: Yeah for sure… and since I self-published “Lost in Seattle” I wanna kick it up a notch and try to get a publisher. . . either like Session Press or Power House.
RR: Power House?
JK: They do a lot of skateboarding publications. Trying to work my way through that whole business side of the art world is kind of a pain in the ass…Or like if I could do Prestel, it’s like a pony or a pegasus – have you seen that? That’s just their logo … They did Tod Seelie’s book – his photos of the underground scene in New York and it was fucking amazing. He got it published through them, it’s called Bright Nights, it’s a really good book. But, yeah, I’m just gonna shop my book around, whenever it’s done. It’s a process.
(weird nervous laughing)
RR: Great! That’s pretty much everything I wanted to know. It’s fascinating stuff… and uh. Oh yeah, I wanted to ask, what are some things you like to do for fun? Now that we’ve had the serious talk … if people wanna meet you randomly, where would you be hangin’? If you’re not working?
JK: If I’m not working, which is 6 days a week, slave shit
RR: Jae has no fun
JK: Haha naw, I enjoy my work, I cook for a living, its cool. But I dunno, usually just hangin’ out with Paolo (at St. Dymphas on St. Marks) or on my rooftop tripping acid on Saturdays. But I dunno man, now that I have this new focus on getting the motorcycle together, you might never see me, I might just be in my backyard every fuckin’ day. I dunno, I like being a daredevil and doing dumb shit, not really having a filter. I dunno.
RR: I used to see pictures of you on top of buildings, like a Best bBy or something.
JK: Haha I dunno. I really wanna do a series of me in New York called “Territory” where I’ll basically…
RR: Just you pissing on stuff?
JK: I have a photo of me standing on top of the 7 train, surfing it, taking a piss. I want one of the train coming AT me just like pissing where people will be like “what the fuck is this kid doing?” The inspiration comes from Ai Weiwei with his middle finger pointed at everything everywhere, some dude decided to take that and he went to a James Franco show, did that [Ai Weiwei thing], got the zine published. .. I was just like, “you know, you’re kind of cutting yourself short, just taking someone else’s concept and not really growing it or developing it.” So I wanna take Ai Weiwei’s inspiration and go around doing dumb shit, try to get arrested for it you know? I have like 5 public urination tickets. Just from me doing dumb shit. It’s kinda vulgar but fuck it.
RR: Cool so you like pissing on stuff and working on motorcycles. Got it. So last thing. What kinda music do you listen to? You know some heads around here, who do you support?
JK: My homies in Navy Gangs, Show Me the Body is fucking great, I try to go to all their shows. Bad Bad not Good is really good. My music tastes are [eclectic to say the least]. I go from like hip hop to Curtis [Mayfield] and also Paolo (our friend) has been spinning a lot of vinyl lately so I’ve been listening to his collection lately and also Aaron too. They spin at 3 diamond every Thursday, vinyl sets. There’s a lot of good bands in NY… DARKWING is tight. I saw Institute at Palisades before they closed. Palisades was really my go-to place for new music, whatever they were putting on was cool. . . But R.I.P.
Jae has his work posted here.
Check it out and keep your eyes peeled for his collection of photos from Korea.