Yeondoo Jung Recreates 17 Children’s Drawings as Physical Photographs in Seoul
In 2004, South Korean artist Yeondoo Jung collected 1,200 drawings from children aged five to seven and selected 17 to reconstruct as large-format photographs. Working across Seoul, Jung collaborated with teenage models, fashion designers, makeup artists, and prop designers to physically build the imagined worlds from the sketches. designboom reported that the artist intentionally used a 4×5-inch large-format film camera instead of digital equipment to capture theatrical scenes, such as using a trampoline to make models appear as though they were floating in mid-air.
The project, titled Wonderland, required intensive planning sessions where creative teams gathered around six-year-old drawings to figure out how to translate flat perspectives into three dimensions. Jung sourced matching fabrics from Seoul’s Dongdaemun fabric market using a 12-color crayon set as his guide, ensuring the final physical costumes matched the children’s exact color choices without making them look overly polished.
Translating Childhood Imagination into Physical Seoul Reality
The photographs retain the distinct logic of the original sketches while engaging with the physical environment of Seoul. In one piece based on a drawing of Cinderella, a palace carries a sign reading “Kingdom,” reflecting how much urban signage children absorb in the city. Another drawing titled Rich and Poor depicts two houses alongside a wealthy individual handing gold to a poor person.
Recreating that specific image forced Jung to examine urban inequality in Seoul, where high-rise apartment complexes contrast with redevelopment zones where poorer residents live in older homes slated for demolition. Jung noted that the physical medium of photography demands an actual relationship between spaces that children draw abstractly, bringing metropolitan expansion and housing culture directly into the frame.
Why Wonderland Gains New Relevance After the Digital Turn
Two decades after its creation, the Wonderland series receives renewed attention due to the stark contrast between physical staging and modern digital generation. When Jung produced the work, film was a deliberate choice to achieve physical reality, whereas similar floating figures or fantastic scenes can now be generated instantly using artificial intelligence text prompts.
Jung explained that the physical effort and inconvenient methods required to stage each photograph are now much harder to separate from the final image. By utilizing teenage models—whose bodies resemble adults while their minds retain childlike observation—the artist bridged the gap between abstract childhood ideas and concrete adult reality.
Frequently Asked Questions About Wonderland
Why did Yeondoo Jung use teenagers instead of young children for the photographs?
Jung chose teenagers because their physical stature visually conveys the bodies of adults, while their psychological outlook remains close to that of the five-to-seven-year-old children who drew the original sketches.
What camera equipment did the artist use for the project?
Jung used a traditional 4×5-inch large-format film camera in 2004, intentionally bypassing digital cameras to capture theatrical, physically staged scenes that required real-world props and gravity-defying tricks like trampolines.
How were the clothing colors chosen for the physical costumes?
The artist and his costume designers relied strictly on a standard 12-color crayon set used by the children, visiting Seoul’s Dongdaemun fabric market to find exact textile color matches.