Beyond the headlines, B-Side brings together distinctive voices exploring K-pop, music, fashion, technology, and culture. Meet the writers behind the perspectives.
Photojournalist & Writer
Stories beyond the frame
There is always more to a photograph than what fits inside the frame.
For Justin Shin, years spent behind the camera have also meant seeing everything that happens around the moments audiences eventually see.
Now, through Through My Lens on allkpop B-Side, he brings those stories beyond the photograph into his writing.
Justin Shin is a Seoul-based fashion and entertainment photojournalist and writer whose work moves between fashion, music, K-pop, and contemporary culture.
Over the years, Shin has covered major Fashion Weeks around the world, including New York, London, Milan, Paris, Seoul, and Tokyo. His photography moves between runway and backstage, front rows and celebrity arrivals, as well as concerts, festivals, red carpets, and cultural events.
He began working with Women’s Wear Daily in 2014 and joined Getty Images in 2020. His photography has appeared across international fashion and news media, including Vogue, WWD, W Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, CNN, The New York Times, and others.
But the finished photograph has never been the entire story.
Years spent inside Fashion Week and live events have given Shin a view of these worlds that often looks very different from what eventually appears on a screen or magazine page. There are photographers waiting shoulder to shoulder in the pit, models preparing backstage, PR teams quietly solving problems, artists moving between carefully timed appearances, and production crews working toward moments that may last only seconds.
It is this world around the photograph that interests him most.
There is something about live photography that Shin continues to find addictive. Very little can be controlled. Lighting changes, schedules move, people appear unexpectedly, and important moments often happen only once. Preparation matters, but so do instinct, patience, and the ability to remain calm amid the noise.
The same philosophy carries into his music and entertainment photography. A still image cannot reproduce sound, but it can hold an expression, a movement, or the energy between an artist and an audience. At its best, a photograph leaves enough behind for the viewer to imagine everything that cannot be heard.
That perspective now extends naturally into writing.
Through his recurring allkpop column, Through My Lens, Shin explores the space where K-pop, fashion, music, photography, and culture meet. Rather than simply documenting who was there, what they wore, or what happened, the column looks at what often goes unnoticed — the rituals of Fashion Week, the relationship between artists and photographers, the seconds before a runway begins, and the people working quietly outside the frame. For Justin Shin, writing is another way of doing what he has always tried to do with a camera: notice the details, stay curious, and tell the story beyond the obvious image. The camera captures the moment. The words reveal what surrounds it.
Through My Lens explores the space where K-pop, fashion, music, photography, and culture meet.
