Rob Whitworth, the timelapse videographer known for the distinctive ‘flow-motion’ city portraits we talked to him about last month, has collaborated with JT Singh and Koryo Tours to take his signature style to North Korea. The short video, entitled Enter Pyongyang, is an expertly edited flurry of sweeping vistas and dynamic camera movements revealing North Korea’s capital city, populated by skate parks, skyscrapers, and pagodas.
The questionable normalacy and general friendliness gets disrupted a couple times throughout the clip, including a flow-motion slam zoom that reveals giant statues of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung decorating a public plaza. So, yes, you might wonder: How did a UK photographer even manage to get into the capital of the notoriously strict Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)?
Videos by VICE
Apparently it wasn’t that hard (just ask VICE and Dennis Rodman). “We got the access through a UK run tour company based in Beijing that operates tours in North Korea,” Whitworth told The Creators Project. With help from the tour company and standard oversight from DPRK officials, Whitworth, Singh, and their team were given wide photographic access to the city—save for construction sites, developing areas, and military personell.
While all of Whitworth’s urban portraits depict a snippet of day-to-day city life in the capital, the North Korean people really feel like the true stars of Enter Pyongyang. “We really wanted to put the people at the heart of the video,” Whitworth said. “The typical city video is about showing a familiar environment to people in an interesting way. With Pyongyang it was quite the opposite – we wanted to show people going about their everyday lives, which is often drowned out by the larger political conversations.”
The Vimeo description also includes a quote from author Dr. Parag Khanna: “This video is the single most significant multi-media contribution to transcending clichés about North Korea as a society defined by reclusiveness and destitution,” he writes. “To travel there is to witness a proud civilization, though one caught in a Cold War time-warp.” Or, in this case, a timelapse.
Explore more flow-motion cities over at Rob Whitworth’s website here and Singh’s website here.
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