Sooyeun Ahn was born and raised in Seoul, Korea where she worked as a writer for 10 years before moving to Japan to study photography at the Tokyo Polytechnic University. After spending two years in Japan, Sooyeun moved to New York City in 2008 to attend the International Center of Photography’s Documentary Photography and Photojournalism Program.
Sooyeun’s photography has been exhibited at Nikon Gallery in Japan, the ICP’s Education Gallery, Chelsea West Gallery, 25 CPW Gallery in New York, PhotoPlace Gallery in Vermont, and Budapest Photography Review in Hungary. Sooyeun also published a book, Keitai Tokyo in 2008, a collection of photographs and writings she produced in Japan. Sooyeun's series 'In Between Two Islands' were chosen as finalist in the 'FotoFilmic 2013' Canadian film photography curator group's competition. Also Sooyeun was selected as an artist of 'Listhus Residency Program' at Iceland in 2016.
Rather than documenting in a more traditional form and content of narrative storytelling, Sooyeun focuses on the variations of possibilities and changes that occur while photographing her subjects through a highly subjective personal vision. After 10 years' nomadic life in many different cities including New York and Tokyo, now Sooyeun lives and works in Jeju island in South Korea.