Kim Jong Il Looking at Things

The cult classic photobook celebrating the North Korean leader’s infinite capacity for looking at things

Comical and bizarre, Kim Jong Il Looking at Things has become a cult classic among photobook connoisseurs since its publication in 2015. The book was based upon one of the most followed, shared and imitated monothematic Tumblr blogs in recent years. Created by Joao Rocha, an art director at an advertising firm in Lisbon, the blog is a collection of photographs which depict the former Dear Leader of North Korea, often accompanied by military personnel or senior advisers, engaged in the act of looking at things. Since the blog’s creation in October 2010, Rocha has posted photographs appropriated from the North Korean Central News Agency, which he matches with deadpan captions: looking at cows ; looking at blue rods ; looking at pastry ; looking at a metalworker ; looking at a DVD labeling machine. Now available again after a long period of unavailability, this hilarious book includes an essay by visual culture writer Marco Bohr.