Archival projects rarely offer a great conceptual rigor, in my opinion. As a collector of vernacular photography for over thirty years, I am often at pains to parse through projects that employ archival material, as I frequently feel that they are unfamiliar with the tropes associated with the material. I frequently struggle similarly when those tropes involve the regurgitation of Aby Warburg’s thinking about categories and projects that group images by subject matter and reframe the works under their name. I struggle mostly because I care about the material, and rarely do I see anything that feels cohesive or that defines the overall project as grounded in logic or a more profound appreciation or understanding of the base material. I am somewhat of an agony aunt when it comes to the failures of these projects.
With Suwon Lee’s Mr. & Mrs., published by Editorial RM and Goma Editora. It is equally essential to discuss the inclusion of designer Jaime Narváez and writer (and photobook academic) Horacio Fernández in the work. This is not to downplay Suwon’s conceptual work. Still, often designers and writers go unsung in the summation and appreciation of a book like this, which is comprised of an elementary fundamental idea executed with brilliance. The concept here is the combined archive of Suwon’s paternal grandparents from Korea. One half of the book relates to the archive of her grandmother, the inverse (read from the back, or vice versa) is her grandfather’s pictures. Both operate with a chronological sensitivity and begin when each grandparent is young, progressing through their elder years.
The design works incredibly well to describe these chronologies, which are shared to the degree that it is a couple involved, but remain completely independent from each other, giving each grandparent a personalized voice that Horacio Fernández has penned, a text fragment for each picture that personafies a private type of life, in so much as that the text is internalized by each grandparent when viewed across from the picture questioning histories, but also lives intertwined by family bond. Questions of domesticity arise, as dark passages discussing work life, monotony, unhappiness, and the general slog of lives conditioned by systems of work, politics, and nuclear family leanings come to the forefront. Horacio Fernández’s acidic text acts as a surrogate for Suwon’s grandparents’ independent thoughts.
The small size of the book gives it a diary-like feel, or perhaps better, a book of poetry. This allows a more intimate reading of the work. The book, from concept to execution, is presented in a restrained and minimal manner that promotes a straightforward interpretation of its aims. This is relatively rare in 2025, with overkill in design and conceptual overload often ruining what would otherwise be a great book. These employ ruin the reader’s experience and frequently insult their intelligence. Suwon’s book is the opposite. It encourages a mood and a semi-open reading in which thoughts are presented clearly. This is where the project’s success takes form. This is why it was essential to acknowledge the designer and the writer within the broader context of Suwon’s project. This is one of the more thoughtful text-photobooks in recent times. Highly Recommended.
