Marco Barbieri is a photographer of Italian/Czech origins based in London. An avid traveler and observer, he tries to document unexpected realities and apply a highly compositional style to daily scenes. He has a keen interest in how urbanism, politics, and religion end up shaping the lives of people. He is keen to understand how these forces affect the daily routine of the population and how, at the same time, life inevitably tends to go on as usual.
Postmodernity
Postmodernity is a photographic essay shot in medium format in South Korea where I concentrated on the main two cities of the peninsula: Seoul and the harbour city of Busan.
As a concept, Postmodernity does not occupy a clear period of time: some think it started after the second World War while other push the starting point at the end of the 20th century. On the other hand, a recurring element of postmodernity is the fact of being opposed to modernity. Where the different movements making up modernity had progressiveness in common, postmodernity is more difficult to define: It is fractioned, non linear and made of many forces that sometimes move in different directions.
In this series I applied the concept of postmodernity to the 21st century city choosing as a subject the reality of South Korea, one of the so called Four Asian Tigers, an advanced society that embraced western modernity and transformed it into something different and more advanced, possibly post modern.
Cities like Seoul are uncontainable multinodal organisms that defy any attempt of definition. They seem incapable of functioning in any linear or autonomous state, they are chaotic and eclectic. This visual essay is an ode to that complexity.
To view more of Marcos work please visit his website.