Sue Kwon

Photographer Sue Kwon lives and works in NYC. She explores the scope of everyday archetypes through portraiture, both in the studio and on the streets. Alongside iconic hip-hop figures such as Beastie Boys to the Wu-Tang Clan, she documents images of familiar life such as children playing in Little Italy and rituals of a Brooklyn high school prom.  Kwon’s subject is the spirit of the city. Her photographs evoke a sense of nostalgia to the city’s vibrant landscape, with a nod to earlier times and its far-reaching creative fortitude.

Her work has been exhibited in NYC, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Paris, Copenhagen, Modena, and London, and is in the public collections of The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Museum, the Alex Katz Foundation, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Kwon is the author of two critically celebrated books, Street Level(Testify Books, 2009) and most recently, Rap is Risen: New York Photographs 1988-2008 (Testify Books, 2021).

Photo by: Atsuko Tanaka @atsukohlic