The dynastic and dictatorial North Korean regime has chosen a propaganda that is making its people invisible. Stéphan Gladieu chose to photograph portraits, a challenge in a country where the individual and their portrait do not exist, where everything is collective and communal. Supervised and accompanied throughout his stay in North Korea, Gladieu invents a space of freedom within the framework that was imposed on him. By choosing the studio portrait, and welcoming a frontal pose and a direct gaze, Gladieu touches on the codes of the propaganda image, employing an approach that renders a sense of familiarity, almost understandable to North Koreans.
