Prof. Eric Weeks serves as Exhibition Director of South Korean photography festival

As an award-winning photographer and filmmaker, Prof. Eric Weeks has exhibited his work internationally. This Spring, he finds himself on the other side of the exhibition, serving as Exhibition Director of the 18th Annual Jeonju International Photography Festival in South Korea.

“It’s very fulfilling as an art practice to be able to curate an exhibit … It’s an art form in itself,” Weeks observes. “It’s so fulfilling to be able to take other people’s images and make a statement.”

It’s the second time that Weeks, Chair of PCA&D’s Photography & Video Department, has served in this role for the Jeonju festival, and he will be on hand for the April 26 opening of People, Places, Things. The exhibition will feature a slate of 12 international artists, with a special exhibition by New York-based photographer Victoria Sambunaris, who happens to be a native of Lancaster. 

In his statement for the Jeonju exhibition, Weeks writes that,

Although their subjects may be people, places, and things, these artists are concerned with making images that communicate ideas that are more complex than only the subject at hand. These strategies include socially-concerned work, identity-based imagery, historical/cultural commentary through the use of archives, observational work to emphasize world realities, and self-referential work that acts as metaphor for psychology and the human condition. Using the verb make, instead of take, is more appropriate when describing these activities. It is a kinetic term that takes into consideration the artist’s ideas, decision making, and informed perspective.

In a full-circle moment, Weeks’s involvement with the festival started with his friendship with photographer Jongsung Paul Choe, who just this year visited PCA&D for an Artist Talk. Weeks’s first time in South Korea was as a visiting artist at Kyungil University, where Choe serves as a professor and as Dean of the College of Arts. During that 2015 visit, the two attended the Jeonju festival. Connections were made with Prof. Seung-Hwan Park, who began the festival as a labor of love, Weeks says, and when Weeks was asked to serve as Exhibition Director, he immediately said yes to the opportunity. 

Photographers whose work will be part of People, Places, Things include: 

Manal Abu-Shaheen (Lebanon/US); Mary Berridge (US); Kaitlyn Danielson (US); Supranav Dash (India); Monika Dubinkaite (Lithuania); Gerard Franciosa (US); Steve Giovinco (US); 

Shane Hulbert (Australia); Sebastian Meija (Chile); Stacy Renee Morrison (US); Katie Murray (US); Twan Peeters (Netherlands).

Weeks has been a professor of Photography and Fine Art at Pennsylvania College of Art & Design since 2010. He earned his Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University School of Arts and his Bachelor’s from the School of Visual Arts.

Top image (cropped): Untitled, (rider), Joshua Tree, California, 2021. Chromogenic print, 39 x 55 inches, courtesy of photographer Victoria Sambunaris