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Kim Jong Il Looking at Things

by João Rocha

Photographs: various photographers; edited by Joao Rocha

Text: Marco Bohr

Publisher: Jean Boite Editions

192 pages

Pictures: 74 color illustrations

Year: 2013

ISBN: 978-2-36568-002-8

Comments: second edition, Hardcover, 167 x 240 mm

Kim Jong Il Looking at Things is one of the most followed, shared and imitated monothematic Tumblr in recent years. Collected by João Rocha, this uninterrupted series of photographs of North Korea's Dear Leader looking at things fascinates with its formal rigor and intensity. Without removing these photographs their primary function - to raise Kim Jong-Il to an iconic rank - this series forces a shift in the purpose of propaganda. The icon changes to taxonomy, the viewer is being watched, and the meaning of this images beaks away.

Accompanied by an essay by Marco Bohr entitled Looking at Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things, the book reveals the springs of our fascination for these accumulated images on the Internet - these memes - analyzing how a series of photographs apparently innocent becomes viral and attractive. By publishing Kim Jong Il Looking at Things in the collection FOLLOW ME, Collecting Images Today, Jean Boîte Éditions continues to highlight another art scene, which establishes the online collector as a creator, and the ephemeral in the perennial.

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