Seoul Korea – Elska

Beschrijving

Elska is a project devoted to sharing our voices and our bodies through honest photography and personal stories. Through our publications, we take you to different cities around the world, introduce you to a dozen or so local guys, and let you get to know them and a bit about gay life in their city. Filled with positivity, sincerity, ad-free and lovingly made, Elska is an independent gay mag that you can truly be proud to own.

Elska Magazine is our flagship product, your key to discovering each Elska city through its local boys and local stories. They are over 150 pages, split into individual chapters that focus on a local guy, filled with evocative images taken of him in the city and at home, plus the story he wrote for us. The experience is most intimate, letting readers feel like they’ve travelled there with us and really gotten to know these men.

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Our twenty-first Elska Magazine issue is our fourth to be made in Asia, where we chose the capital of South Korea for the honour. Seoul is an incredible city, fast-paced and full of trend-setting fashion, a slick music scene, and cutting edge technology. Yet it’s also a city where such modernity does not extend to the society, which is conservative and guided by ‘traditional’ values. It is absolutely not the easiest place to be gay.

Inside this issue you’ll get to know the real Seoul through the experiences of fourteen men from the LGBTQ community who we met during our visit. Each is photographed in a natural, documentary-like style in the city and in their homes, dressed in their own style or sometimes not dressed at all, revealing themselves fully for the readers’ gaze. The honest style of imagery is then paired with personal stories written by each of the men, kept in their original voices and languages (followed by English translations).

Some of the men you’ll meet in Elska Seoul include:

• Uin L, who details a trip to a traditional bathhouse (a jjimjilbang), told through a lens of uncertainty and self-consciousness;
• Jay S, who describes the moment when his mother confronts him with the accusation that he is gay;
• Ivan J, who recounts an afternoon of vegetable-aided masturbation set to the soundtrack of hymnal Bach;
• Heezy Y, who talks about the difficulties of finding success and happiness in a society so full of expectations and conformity;
• Jose S-M, who as one of a large number of foreigners living in Seoul reflects upon his seven years living in the city;
• James K, who speaks of his journey to reconcile how to be a Korean man in his way against the opposing standard of masculinity set by his father.

Ondertitel: Local Boys + Local Stories

Auteur: Liam Campbell

Jaar van uitgave: 2018

Aantal pagina’s: 180

Bindwijze: paperback

Uitgeverij: Elska Magazine