My name is Doosoo Kim. I am a street photographer based in Toronto, Canada, originally from South Korea. I’ve also been a professor of Economics at Toronto Metropolitan University since 2017. I'd like to clarify that I am a non-professional photographer, and I never thought about writing a dedicated photography bio before. However, a recent incident made me realize just how integral photography has become to my life.
My journey began in 2001 with a compact digital camera. My father, a former professional photographer, saw my enthusiasm and let me use my grandfather’s old film cameras in 2002. My grandfather, also a professional photographer, had passed away in 1997, but his legacy lived on through those cameras. While my father cautioned me against pursuing photography as a career (understandable given the Korean market at the time), the craft quickly became a passion I carried for years.
Then, in 2024, I discovered that my father had disposed of over 100 rolls of my film—images spanning five years before I went fully digital. Many rolls were black-and-white films I processed in my rented room in Seoul. Although many of the negatives had been scanned, a few were lost entirely, and it felt like losing a piece of myself. Ironically, that loss motivated me to start shooting black-and-white film (and digital) again and ultimately led me to write this bio.
I mainly focus on photographing people. While (a part of) my academic research examines the economic foundations of how individuals make resource-allocation decisions, photography lets me explore the human stories and emotions behind those decisions—stories that math-driven models often overlook. For example, an economist might note how many people in Toronto use the subway because it’s optimal or efficient, but we rarely stop to see who they really are or how they experience that daily commute.
I wish for my photos to acknowledge our shared humanity—almost like family portraits. I ask myself how to capture the connections and interactions that still bind us. In this sense, photography for me, complements what Alfred Marshall once described in economics as a balance of “cool heads” and “warm hearts”—an approach that weighs rational understanding against genuine empathy.
I’m primarily using this website to present my social media posts in a more organized way. Thank you for reading!