Between Plastic Surgery and the Photographic Representation
Ji Yeo Undoes the Elusive Narrative of Transformation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12424566 |
|---|---|
| Authors | So-Rim Lee (0000-0001-9227-8373, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 705-733 |
| Publication date | 2022-11-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | positions asia critique (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1067-9847 • E-ISSN: 1527-8271 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/10679847-9967318 |
| OpenAlex | W4310549853 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 8 |
This essay looks at New York–based South Korean photographer Ji Yeo's two photographic series Beauty Recovery Room and It Will Hurt a Little. Tracing the social rhetoric on plastic surgery in South Korea after the 1997 IMF Crisis, it takes Yeo's photographs as counterexamples to the sensationalized depiction of plastic surgery as a symbol of upward mobility put forth by Seoul's private clinics. It argues that Yeo's images re-present surgery as a practice of bodily rupture necessitating an affective, material, and durational process of recovery, thereby demystifying the elusive narrative of cosmetic transformation promised by South Korea's plastic surgery industry. Exploring the performative affinities and disparities between the photographic representation and plastic surgery, it contends that Yeo's images ultimately humanize the individuals that experience the solitary process of healing
Aesthetics · Art · Depiction · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Performative utterance · Plastic Surgery · Politics · Representation (politics · Rhetoric · Symbol (formal · Body Image and Dysmorphia Studies · Law · Medicine · Philosophy · Photography and Visual Culture · Visual Culture and Art Theory · Surgery
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |