Jun Ahn Figurative Photography

South Korean Jun Ahn came to study in the US, where she graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in art history in 2006, followed by two years of postgraduate study of photography at the Pratt Institute. While at the Pratt, she had her first work displayed as part of group gallery exhibitions and began work on the Self-Portrait project, which to date is her most prominent series of photographs, which she regards as a performance without an audience, an end of the youth of sorts and a coming to terms with the future. In 2009–10, she was awarded the Dean’s Scholarship at New York’s Parsons School for Design, and in 2011, received both the Dean's and a departmental scholarship. During this time, her work received its first major exhibitions, including a joint exhibition with Kazuna Taguchi at PS 122 in New York. Furthermore, Ahn has been selected as one of BJP’s 20 Photographers To Watch in 2013. Parsons awarded her a Master of Fine Arts with honors in January 2012, after which she acquired a Ph.D. in photography from Hongik University in Seoul.