This project started from a simple idea of collecting photos of bus shelters. The reason they interest me is because back in Toronto, the bus shelters looked more or less the same since because they are gradually replaced with a new model every few years. However in Korea, there’s more of a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” attitude which results in the wonderful diversity of different bus shelters from different eras. As the project continued, it eventually turned into the goal of visiting every city and county in Chungcheongnam-do, to document the different variety of bus shelters which represented each city and county. In order to complete this goal, I spent a lot of time on Daum Map (Korea’s version of Google Map) since I had to find out where the bus shelters were located and how I was going to reach them. One thing that made this project difficult is that I could only travel during the weekends since I had to work during the week. The time I had taking photos was also limited because not every city/county had direct buses going back to where I lived. This resulted in meticulous planning of which buses and trains I had to take and where I had to transfer in order to decrease traveling time. Through this project, I can officially say I have visited every city and county in Chungcheongnam-do. Although it took me almost six months to complete, it has motivated me to go out and visit places where I would have never had the chance to go to. At the end, it has made me realize there is more to bus shelters than a structure to keep people out the elements. They represent a community; of where people from and where their roots are.
Below are the bus shelters representing each city/county in the province.
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