JeongMee Yoon: The Pink and Blue Project

Why do girls love pink toys, and boys love blue ones? The fi ne arts photographer Jeongmee Yoon (*1969, Seoul) poses this question in her work, The Pink and Blue Project, for which she began photographing Korean and American girls and boys in their rooms in 2005. The gender-specifi c color schemes quickly established themselves as an overarching phenomenon, independent of cultural or ethnic background. Yoon’s impressive portraits, for which she spent hours carefully arranging pink or blue objects, question these color codes and the consumer habits of both parents and children. They reveal the connections linking gender identity and social norms, consumer culture, and media. She continued this project by visiting the children years later and capturing how their favorite colors had changed. Jeongmee Yoon was awarded the ILWOO Foundation Prize for her project.