The Poetics of the Overlooked: Mark Mingu Cho on Absence and Memory

A SCRAWL of half-faded text, wedged between peeling paint and sun-bleached posters. London, Toronto, Melbourne—it barely matters where. Mark Mingu Cho notices it, frames it, holds it.

In 111 Days, his newly published photobook, Cho assembles these fragments from eleven cities across the globe, gathered during a period of intense movement after his military service in South Korea.

The title is literal: 111 days from departure to return. Yet the book is no diary. Instead, it is a meditation on the language of public surfaces—graffiti, hand-lettered signs, and advertising—each carrying its own subtle freight of humour, protest, grief, or solidarity. Stripped of people yet saturated with their voices, the images record what remains when bodies have moved on, but their words linger. Published by M.33 and launched in July 2025 at Animal House Fine Arts, 111 Days is as much about pace as about place.

Cho’s own story threads quietly through the work. The journey began after 18 months of conscription in the Republic of Korea army—a period he describes as “worlds away from anything creative.” On discharge, stripped of passion and individuality, he travelled to reclaim them. Photographing was as instinctive as breathing. The decision to focus on text came later, when he realised the phrases he encountered—cropped, partial, often unplaceable—spoke as much to universal human conditions as to specific locations.

I was interested in how photography could function not only as an image but as a method of thinking — a way of slowing down, re-examining the everyday, and finding where absence leaves a mark

If 111 Days maps a global drift, Cho’s previous project, Spaces in Hyphen: Of Present-Absence and Absent-Presence, anchors itself to a single geography: Saadiyat Island, home to NYU Abu Dhabi, where he studied. Here, his lens turns to the thresholds between natural and artificial—imported palm trees, manicured lawns, raw construction sites—composed without people yet dense with the residue of human labour. The absence is deliberate.

Both projects share a visual grammar: an attentiveness to the overlooked, a refusal to romanticise. The influence of the New Topographics is clear—Lewis Baltz’s industrial parks, John Pfahl’s monumentalised sand piles—but Cho’s framing also bears the imprint of his mentor, Tarek Al Ghoussein, who sharpened his technical and conceptual clarity.

What unites these works is a preoccupation with absence—not as void, but as an active presence. In 111 Days, the absence of the speaker draws us closer to their words. In Spaces in Hyphen, the absence of the worker renders the machinery, earthworks, and staged greenery almost sentient. Together, they suggest that to understand a place, one must look not only at who is there, but at what is left behind.

Photography becomes a way of holding onto moments that are about to vanish, and of tracing how built environments reveal both the ambitions and the fragilities of the societies that shape them. — MARK Mingu Cho

M-ARTLENS: What prompted the journey that became 111 Days, and how did the idea develop from the initial concept to the finished book?

MARK MINGU CHO: Between November 2021 and May 2023, I served in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) army as part of mandatory conscription for most able-bodied males holding a Korean passport. Those 1.5 years—which felt like an eternity—were a blow to my artistic pursuits, as the army is worlds away from anything creative. After my discharge, I noticed a sharp decline in my interest in the visual arts, including photography, a field I had been deeply passionate about before my service.

Having had my former passions and individuality stripped away for a significant period, I felt the need to embark on an existential quest to regain them. On a more practical level, I was also searching for a place to call home, as I had begun to question whether I could truly settle in Korea for personal, social, and cultural reasons. I didn’t set out on that journey to produce a photobook. Photographing and journaling—habits that had been part of my daily life before being interrupted by military service—naturally provided me with raw materials. Later, when I felt the desire to share my observations and feelings, those materials became the foundation of the work.

Every photograph in 111 Days includes some form of text. Why was it important to make this a consistent element, and what role do these fragments play in the series?

Including text in each image gave the series a conceptual coherence, as my journey also produced other kinds of photographs—urban landscapes, architecture, and more. But I found myself most drawn to images containing text. Travelling alone for an extended period, I often felt as though the texts I encountered on the streets were speaking directly to me.

Through tight cropping in several images, I aimed to introduce an element of crypticness. While some texts hint at clear expressions, issues, or phenomena, I wanted to make it difficult for viewers to associate a given text with a particular place or culture. This choice was rooted in the belief that certain messages can have a universal resonance, regardless of where they are found.

You wrote extensively during your travels but set the writing aside in favour of the photographs. How did that decision change your understanding of the work?

Writing and photographing went hand in hand throughout the trip. Once the conceptual focus shifted to “text” within the images, I began to feel that including a substantial body of writing alongside them could diminish the photographs’ strength—both individually and as a whole.

Choosing to omit the writing gave the images more breathing room, allowing them to carry their density and complexity without being overshadowed.

Many of the texts you photographed carry humour, resilience, or dissent. How did you decide which to include?

In sheer numbers, there are probably more photographs in the series that convey dissent, division, and the fractures within our world. Including those that reflect humour and resilience was a deliberate reminder—to myself and viewers—that even amidst chaos and conflict, humour and resilience persist.

I believe that humour, especially when it flirts with borderline profanity, should never trivialise or disrespect real struggles or pain. Yet some of the images that sit on that edge are included in the work—not as endorsements of the literal words inscribed, but as visual evidence. They serve as reminders of how much pain exists in the world, and how much love is needed to counter it.

How did you approach sequencing the images in 111 Days so they flow across different cities while keeping a cohesive rhythm?

At one stage, my publisher, M.33 (Helen Frajman), and I both felt that a purely chronological sequence might be too simple. I experimented with other arrangements—grouping images by visual cues, such as whether the text appeared on a pole, a flat surface, or a built structure.

In the end, we chose a chronological sequence as a faithful representation of the journey. It kept the structure straightforward, allowing the complexity and cryptic qualities to come from the texts within the photographs themselves.

After the movement of 111 Days, you’ve been more settled in Melbourne. Has this change in pace influenced how you make photographs now?

Even though I’ve now been based in one place for the longest stretch in years, the way I take photographs hasn’t changed much since 111 Days. I still stop in my tracks whenever I encounter text in the urban environment—on walls, signage, built structures, or objects. Most passersby would think What in the world am I stopping and photographing for.

Perhaps being drawn to such expressions, and documenting them, is my way of familiarising myself with a relatively new environment—a habit I likely developed after leaving Korea for another country at 18. I don’t recall taking similar photographs in my country of birth, possibly because I was too accustomed to the visual language there, or because such expressions are largely absent in many public spaces, which tend to be too polished and sanitised.

The witness provides the grounding, while the author shapes a visual language that invites viewers to slow down, look closely, and interpret for themselves

What first drew you to document the changing environment around NYU Abu Dhabi and Saadiyat Island in Spaces in Hyphen?

When I began my undergraduate studies in Abu Dhabi, I found myself in the midst of a constantly changing environment. The sheer pace and scale of construction—on campus and across the UAE—meant that the character of a place could shift in weeks or months.

Saadiyat Island, a man-made tourism and cultural development whose name in Arabic means “happiness,” was physically and, in some ways, utopically isolated. The university’s identity as an American institution in a Gulf country—where not all aspects of New York could be transplanted wholesale—added another layer of dissonance to my experience.

Finally, realising that this desert landscape had once been part of an ocean deepened my interest. It reminded me that the spaces around me could not simply be reduced to “desertedness” but invited a closer look at their layered histories and features.

In both projects, people are absent, but their presence is implied. What does this absence allow you to explore?

By only hinting at people, I’m able to seek traces, remnants, and stories that might be harder to notice if they appeared directly in the frame. Portraits and human-focused works are powerful, but our eyes and minds are quick to attach preconceived notions, stereotypes, or imagined narratives to a visible figure—unless the photographer carefully disrupts this tendency through strong conceptual framing.

Since I haven’t yet developed a distinctive conceptual language for working with human figures in that way, I’ve chosen an alternative: to keep people physically absent while allowing their presence to resonate through what they’ve left behind.

Spaces in Hyphen focuses on the threshold between natural and artificial elements. How do you identify and frame these in-between spaces?

I set out to capture nature-like artificial features and artificial-like natural ones. Palm trees, for example, may appear natural but are often non-native, imported, and planted through human labour.

Similarly, traces of construction cranes, drilling machines, and compost piles for trees have become so commonplace that they seem like natural components of the landscape. These in-between spaces, shaped by both organic processes and human intervention, are bound together by the subtle presence of labour. Without showing the people themselves, the machinery and structures almost pose as organic features of their surroundings.

You often photograph raw materials and construction sites. How do you approach these subjects in a way that doesn’t romanticise them?

When it comes to raw materials versus construction sites, my approach differs for each.

With raw materials, my attempt to aestheticise them inevitably brings a degree of romanticisation. Concrete bricks, piles of sand, ladders—while typically seen as components for a final product—can be understood as final products in their own right, with identities separate from their functionality. We are often too quick to focus only on their utilitarian role. Paying closer attention to my daily encounters with these materials, and studying their shape, mass, and contour, has been a way of deconstructing and deciphering the environments around me. By experimenting with scale, elevation, and lighting, I aim to draw out qualities beyond their stillness, making it possible for them to be aestheticised.

Construction sites, however, I approach with more caution, wary of painting a romantic picture. By capturing transient moments without people present, I’ve sought to unsettle the usual focus on the mise-en-scène or finished product, which tends to receive more attention than the subtle signs of human intervention—signs we often overlook because they are so commonplace. The piles of sand and stacks of concrete bricks will disappear once they are used. Construction sites will cease to be “works-in-progress” once completed, and the builders will move on. Some sites, however, remain unfinished, decaying in place, waiting for someone to notice them.

Perhaps it’s irrelevant, but we, too, will one day turn to dust and ashes when our time is called. The world will move on, time will keep ticking—but our spirits will linger where we once were, waiting for others to find traces of us. I hope to make images that capture glimpses of the existential, both literally and figuratively.

Lewis Baltz, John Pfahl, and Tarek Al Ghoussein are important influences for you. What aspects of their work have shaped your approach?

Lewis Baltz’s The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California (1974)—produced in the 1970s as the area rapidly shifted from rural land to a technology hub—prompted me to consider how bleakness and human intervention can be depicted as a way of processing landscape change. His exploration of inhabitation, anonymity, and settlement resonated deeply when I witnessed similar transformations on Saadiyat Island.

Two photographs from John Pfahl’s Piles series—Nursery Topsoil Pile (winter), Lancaster, NY (February 1994) and Toxic Waste Reclamation Site, Niagara Falls, NY (1996)—were pivotal in encouraging me to re-examine construction materials and equipment through light, atmosphere, and scale. By using the camera to make sand piles, bricks, and raw materials appear monumental, Pfahl inspired me to aestheticise what is not typically aestheticised, and to explore how beauty and environment intertwine—an ambiguity that also relates to the boundaries between natural and nature-like, artificial and artificial-like.

Tarek Al Ghoussein—my mentor and the dedicatee of 111 Days—guided my project Spaces in Hyphen (2020–2021), meeting with me almost weekly, even during his sabbatical. He pushed me to be more technically and conceptually coherent, and to constantly engage with other artists’ work—now part of my daily practice. Tarek encouraged me to develop a deeper relationship with my work, fostering a confidence I previously lacked. He changed how I approach photography, reminding me that its strength lies in the work itself, not in how richly I can project meaning onto it.

111 Days was made quickly across many locations, while Spaces in Hyphen developed slowly in one place. What has each way of working taught you about time in photography?

111 Days was made quickly across many locations but developed slowly in one place—Melbourne—whereas Spaces in Hyphen was developed slowly in Abu Dhabi but made with time-consciousness across multiple locations within Saadiyat Island.

Working on 111 Days felt like unearthing both photographs and time itself, since I had no prior intention of creating a body of work. That project, photographed between September 2023 and January 2024, only began to take shape over a year later, in February 2025, when I first contacted my publisher, Helen Frajman, at M.33. By contrast, Spaces in Hyphen was shaped by the need to deliver a final project as part of my university capstone. Although context-specific, each day of shooting was done with efficiency and deadlines in mind, scouting locations that could fit the thesis.

In that sense, 111 Days was more organic and serendipitous, teaching me that in photography—or perhaps any art—the approach and concept could ultimately outweigh the length or circumstances of production. Time in photography, I’ve learned, is like a crooked bow.

Do you see these projects as separate works or as connected parts of a larger body of research?

I see them as separate works because of their formal differences. However, some overlaps could lead to my next project: documenting “texts” found within construction or development sites, with the location yet to be decided. Thematically, 111 Days and Spaces in Hyphen share an interest in exploring the presence and absence of human intervention, tracing inscriptions and constructed landscapes that blur the line between natural and artificial, and approaching photography across varied geographies and working tempos.

Time in photography, I’ve learned, is like a crooked bow

You’ve spoken about expanding Spaces in Hyphen to include cultural institutions on Saadiyat Island. What will you be looking for as you continue this work?

The idea of expanding that project emerged between 2020 and 2021, when I was actively working on it—what now feels like a lifetime ago. Since leaving Abu Dhabi in May 2021, I haven’t returned, due to military service, existential challenges, and other life events. God willing, I hope to visit in November 2025, when many art events take place in the city.

With the development of Saadiyat Island’s mega-museums having advanced significantly since I left, I hope to encounter a wider range of ‘raw materials’ for the work. Even in my absence, I’ve remained interested in researching how different forms of human intervention occur within relatively new or developing cultural venues—something tied, in the UAE context, to the country’s evolving identity. On a practical level, I’ll need to find ways to secure permits to access these sites, likely from government authorities.

Looking ahead, how do you see yourself balancing the global and the local in your practice?

As cliché as it sounds, the line between the global and the local is highly fluid, even as the world becomes more insular due to geopolitical and sociopolitical forces.

Before being a person who takes and makes images—whether or not I can call myself an artist or photographer—I am a human being, and I believe my lived experiences will shape how I balance the two in my practice: born in South Korea, educated in the UAE and the US, having been based in Australia, and soon heading off to another sojourn.

On the pedagogical, curatorial, and perhaps commercial sides, I hope to contribute to bringing greater visibility to photography from what is often referred to as the Global South.

One day we too will return to dust and ashes. Time will move on, yet our presence will linger, waiting to be found in the traces we left behind

How do your projects connect with wider conversations in contemporary photography about urban change, absence, and the politics of place?

By omitting people but implying their presence, I try to shift attention from the spectacle of completion or the iconography of a city, towards the overlooked or in-between stages of transformation. This connects to wider conversations in contemporary photography that question whose stories urban change reflects, what gets preserved or erased, and how place is tied to identity, memory, and movement.

The politics of place, for me, lies in these tensions—between natural and artificial, permanence and impermanence, local specificity and global circulation. Photography becomes a way of holding onto moments that are about to vanish, and of tracing how built environments reveal both the ambitions and the fragilities of the societies that shape them.

In both 111 Days and Spaces in Hyphen, there’s a balance between recording what you see and shaping it into something more interpretive. How do you see yourself in the space between photographer as witness and photographer as author?

The witness in me is committed to paying attention—to what is there, to what might be overlooked, and to moments that are fleeting or on the verge of disappearing. That means respecting the integrity of what I encounter, whether it’s a pile of sand, a fragment of text, or a shifting urban landscape.

The author in me emerges in the choices I make—how I frame, crop, sequence, and sometimes aestheticise the subject. These decisions inevitably inflect the work with my perspective, even when the subject itself remains untouched. I think the “space between” is where my practice is most alive: the witness provides the grounding, while the author shapes a visual language that invites viewers to slow down, look closely, and interpret for themselves.

IN BOTH 111 Days and Spaces in Hyphen, Mark Mingu Cho resists spectacle in favour of the slow, deliberate act of noticing. His work charts the afterimage of human presence—traces that survive in scrawled words, shifting earth, and the tenuous boundaries between natural and constructed worlds. It is a practice that asks us to look at what we habitually overlook, to treat the overlooked not as absence, but as a vital presence shaping our sense of place. Whether moving quickly across continents or rooted in one contested landscape, Cho’s images remind us that the politics of place is often written in small, transient marks. They remain—like Cho himself—attentive to the quiet insistence of what endures in what is left behind.

For more information, and to purchase 111 Days, visit M.33.