In this series of photographic works, Symbiosis (2015), Hyun-jin Kim deals with a psychological phenomenon observed in modern society where small families are becoming popular due to various reasons such as early independence and low birthrates of the youth. From her own experience, Kim intended to depict a symbiotic relationship between people and their pets in terms of being comforted by one another.
Kim looked for working families who feed pets and arranged the first shooting for portraits of people and their animals together in her studio; then she visited every residence of the families, attached the studio portraits on the walls, and took the second pictures of the pets left home alone while their owners went out to work. By framing these two types of portraits, which were taken in studio and on location, together in a single image, Kim tried to reveal the loneliness of people and their pets as well as the metaphorical relationship of their mutual dependence.