©Valerie Yong Ock Kim, Only the Bones, published by Datz Press

“I learned to stand my ground against the grief. I learned to not look away, instead to hold it, watch it, and to keep breathing. It shifts, it shares its other side. It transforms to the place where love lives; and courage.” _Valerie Yong Ock Kim

Valerie Yong Ock Kim and I met several decades ago and our friendship has weathered time, distance, and losses–the most profound being the loss of her wonderful husband in 2016. At the core of her artistry is the world of water that surrounds her world in Hawaii, bringing together ideas of transformation, renewal, and the fundamental duality of life and destruction,

Her new book, Only the Bones, published by Datz Press, is a record of the eight years the artist spent caring for her husband, who lived with Alzheimer’s disease. The book begins with a poem dedicated to their story by photographer Duane Michals and unfolds through diaries and poems that bear witness, with the whole body, to what it means to love someone and to lose them. It also includes photographs made by the artist at the sea, a place that offered her solace throughout this journey. Quietly and without sentimentality, the book reflects on what remains as we lose someone we love, and on the things that become visible only when we choose not to turn away from grief, but to remain within it.

©Valerie Yong Ock Kim, What the Ocean Sees, from Only the Bones. published by Datz Press

I am drawn to the fragile, the interior life, beneath the surface of thinking, while the mind is busy, moving between the lucid and the dreamlike. My successful images inhabit thresholds—between the seen and unseen, the intimate and elemental.  I find this place sacred, where the moment is silent and fused to the sweep of the natural world and human experience.

My husband’s passing in 2016 continues to inform my practice. In the wake of loss, I approach photography as a form of listening—to what lingers, what is concealed. Drawing from the mythologies of the Hawaiian Islands, I am listening for what remains. – Val Kim

©Valerie Yong Ock Kim, Inside the daily adventure from Only the Bones. published by Datz Press

Valerie Yong Ock Kim is a photography-based artist, interested in what remains unseen, what occurs under the surface.

Raised by Korean and Okinawan parents, Kim developed an early practice of cultural listening and navigating passions, grounded in the daily mythos of the Hawaiian Islands.

She earned a Master of Public Health, working in the community with teens and in Psychiatric Units of Oahu hospitals before fully turning to the arts.

Kim was the writer-director on a film about Soviet and American children during the Peace Talks between the US and USSR, called Waging Peace. She worked as a Location Manager on feature films out of Los Angeles for twenty years. Working on films like the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series, Kim developed her artistic practice between the demands of powerful creatives and large-scale movie projects.

Her photographic work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across the United States and Europe. Exhibitions include a two-person exhibit with Wayne Levin at Loi Gallery, Imagine Water; Honolulu, HI; Gallerie Xll, Bergamot Station, Focus Photo LA , CA; Verum Ultimum Gallery, Liminal II, Portland Oregon; Downtown Art Gallery, Artists of Hawaii, Honolulu; Passing Notes, Conversations from the Hallelujah series, Crafton Hills College, Yucaipa, CA; ReGENERATE! Book Arts, Donkey Mill Art Center, Holualoa, HI, and Light, Speed, Matter, A Still Place Waiting, Hui No’eau Visual Art Center, Makawao, Maui. Her filmography is on IMDB.com under Valerie Kim. Her website is valyokim.com.

Instagram: @val_kim_studio

©Valerie Yong Ock Kim, Remembering… before from Only the Bones. published by Datz Press

©Valerie Yong Ock Kim, Running a race with no finish line, from Only the Bones. published by Datz Press

©Valerie Yong Ock Kim, Suddenly, an open hole, a piece of sky, from Only the Bones. published by Datz Press

©Valerie Yong Ock Kim,, It feels good. from Only the Bones. published by Datz Press

©Valerie Yong Ock Kim,, Only the bones left of once feathered wings, from Only the Bones. published by Datz Press

©Valerie Yong Ock Kim, I’m still trying to remember the dream… from Only the Bones. published by Datz Press

©Valerie Yong Ock Kim,, Cover from Only the Bones. published by Datz Press

©Valerie Yong Ock Kim, Dear Friend by Duane Michals from Only the Bones. published by Datz Press

About Datz Press

I wanted to say a little something about my experience working with Datz Press. They are a group of women who handled this very delicate project with a firm hand and with kid gloves. They took my material and created their own small film. They took the characters involved, found their own timing and dramatic line and visually fashioned a story that went way over the top of what I could have imagined. I wanted to share that creating this book with them was a gentle female voyage handling differences with care and joy. It is miracle that is possible! Thanks.

Instagram:@datzpress

How to Order the Book:

https://www.store.datzpress.kr/publications/2026-only-the-bones

or contact me via email on my website: using the word BOOK in the title.

www.valyokim.com