The End of Love and Hate by Vostok Press (discontinued/arreté. seul distributeur
VOSTOK PRESS is an independent publishing house based in Seoul. Korea. It publishes a bimonthly photography magazine, VOSTOK, and books on arts and photography. VOSTOK PRESS organizes exhibitions and events, directs lectures and workshops. It also carries out projects for institutions and private companies.
At the End of Love and Hate Scenes and Stories Encountered There
In this issue’s special feature, “The End Phase of Love and Hate,” VOSTOK Magazine traces the forms and traces of love and hate that have passed through seasons both intensely hot and bitterly cold. Within relationships ranging from lovers to family members, the issue presents photographs and texts that delicately record the many shades of emotion that arise between people.
Five writers—Ko Myungjae, Park Jun, Park Seoryeon, Lee Seosu, and Kim Hwajin—give voice to stories that retrace the trajectories of loves or hatreds that have already passed. Meanwhile, fifteen photographers, including Yang Kyungjun, Lee Wooseon, and Kim Siyul, bring before our eyes tender yet piercing scenes etched deeply into the heart. Through these works, we reflect together on what it is that we should hold onto and remember after both the love and the hate born between precious people have finally faded.
After the Shared Seasons Have Passed The Afterimages and Traces That Remain
In that photobook, not a single page contains an intact photograph. Images are torn, ripped, cut, crumpled, punctured, clipped away, carved out, painted over in deep black or vivid red… In this way, some faces are erased from the photographs, while others are left behind. Though the images depict faces never seen before and places unknown, they nonetheless feel strangely familiar. Hasn’t everyone, at least once, cut out or erased someone’s face from a photograph like this? Sometimes to keep it close, treasured in a wallet and looked upon again and again; at other times to erase every trace, because even looking at it has become unbearable.
The title of the photobook is Love & Hate & Other Mysteries. As I look at the wistful remnants of photographs saturated with the love and hate of people whose names I do not know, I am reminded of certain loves and hatreds that once bore special names for me. On the final page, there is a single image: a photograph cut into pieces with a knife and then taped back together. In it appears a blonde woman with heavy eye makeup. Is she a lover who delivered a bitter farewell and turned away without mercy? Or is she my mother in her youth, who left me behind as a child? There is no way to know. What the photograph does tell us, however, is that both that relentless love and that wearisome hatred have already reached the end of their season. Perhaps it was only because the heart had already passed through the height of love’s summer and the depth of hate’s winter that it became possible to wield a knife against a face and body in a photograph—and then, once again, to piece them back together and keep them.
Whether love or hate, it seems difficult to measure precisely why an emotion that once shook us so intensely came into being, or exactly when it faded away. When an emotion is powerful enough to make us lose ourselves, it is often only much later, after a long passage of time, that we come to understand it dimly. Of course, love and hate do not begin like a hundred-meter sprint, with a clear “ready, set, go,” nor do they have a visible finish line, so trying to pinpoint their beginnings and ends can feel futile. And yet, there are moments when clarity suddenly arrives: Ah, that was when this love ended. Ah, that was when this hatred quietly disappeared. In such moments, we are seized by a peculiar feeling—as if we have lost something significant, and at the same time overcome something enough to begin anew. Only when we sense that something has truly ended do we begin, at last, to slowly examine what has changed, and what new shifts have settled around the edges of our hearts.
The End of Love and Hate, Vostok Press. South Korea, January 2024.
Format: Magazine
Dimensions: 170 mm x 240 mm
Pages: 224
Publisher: Vostok Press
ISBN: 9791170370581
Language: Korean
