"Discovering the Next Generation of Photographers and Videographers" Canon Korea Inc. Announces Mirae Artist Award Winners

[Financial News] Canon Korea Inc. announced on the 9th that it has selected four final winners for the 2025 Mirae Artist Award, a university student photography and video contest conducted in collaboration with the Parkgeonhi Foundation.
Now in its 19th year, the Mirae Artist Award is a next-generation artist development program aimed at discovering and nurturing future photographers who will lead Korea’s photography and video fields. The program is jointly hosted and organized by Canon Korea Inc. and the Parkgeonhi Foundation. To date, it has produced a total of 75 winners, who continue to be active as artists in various fields through their photographic and video works.
A total of 191 participants entered this year’s 2025 Mirae Artist Award. The judging panel, composed of Jang Minseung and Bak Hyongryol—both active as Canon Masters—and Kim Jong Un, CEO of The Reference, selected four winners who demonstrated their unique perspectives and artistic potential.
The 2025 Mirae Artist Award winners are: in the photography category, Kwon Min-hyuk (2nd year, Department of Photographic Art, Kaywon University of Art & Design) and Jung In-hwan (3rd year, Department of Photo Media, Sunchon National University (SCNU)); in the video category, Changhwan Song (4th year, Department of Art & Technology, Sogang University) and Kim Yoon-seo (4th year, Department of Fine Art, Korea National University of Arts). The judges praised these four for exploring how memories are constructed and transmitted by combining personal experiences and historical narratives with the essence of their chosen media.
In the photography category, Kwon Min-hyuk’s 'Our Salvation' captures experiences of isolation and connection surrounding queer identity through portraits and handwritten text, showing how identity, once a barrier, can become a bridge connecting diverse people. Jung In-hwan’s 'Searching for Dollars' traces the story of dollars allegedly buried in his great-grandfather’s old house, exploring the gap between memory and record to reveal photography not as a tool for proving truth, but as a device for constructing narrative.
In the video category, Changhwan Song’s 'This Is Gold' questions the boundaries between technology and faith, reality and belief, by imagining a stone found in the mountains as gold, prompting reflection on the essence of the values we rely on. Kim Yoon-seo’s 'If You Don’t Wake Up, a Dream Is No Longer a Dream' is a video work focusing on a nostalgia never experienced, highlighting how colonial-era images become a collective déjà vu and examining the desires embedded in historical imagery.
The judging panel for the 2025 Mirae Artist Award commented, “Both the photography and video categories stood out for their proactive approach to reconstructing the temporality and image structure of the photographic medium, as well as their experimental transformation of personal issues into narrative strategies. If scene composition and narrative structure continue to develop more intricately, each artist’s work is expected to maintain distinct formal characteristics and further expand the medium.”
Canon Korea Inc. will present the four winners with the Canon EOS R6 Mark II RF24-105mm F4 L IS USM Lens Kit, its flagship full-frame mirrorless camera for the second half of 2025. In addition, the winners will receive tutoring opportunities from professional judges and photographer Hein-Kuhn Oh. Their works will also be featured in an exhibition and published in a photobook.
mkchang@fnnews.com Jang Min-gwon Reporter