Ko Show
Mercedes. Tinder. The world’s best artists under 30. With a client list of bluechip brands, Worldwide assignments, and a sage cinematographer’s eye, Kimberley’s Kalum Ko is building an award-laden career from his home away from home in Brooklyn, New York.
No Sleep in Brooklyn — Ko was recently nominated for a prestigious Young Guns Award. Established in 1996, the honour recognizes creative superstars around the world under the age of 30 in the fields of advertising, graphic design, film, and photography. — Belle Carlson Photo
It’s meta work and, as it happens, Ko is mega good at it. Reached this summer at his Greenpoint apartment (which, unglamorously, he shares with two roommates), Ko is the first to acknowledge that an almost unimaginable sequence of events brought him here. “I can’t tell you how unpredictable this ride has been,” he says. “You’re going along, doing this, trying that, doing whatever to make the rent, and suddenly you get a DM on Instagram from an agency in Europe and your whole life changes.”
But Ko’s serendipitous world of friends and friends of friends emerged from a long, steady process. “I owe so much to my parents,” he says. That would be Jeff Pew and Alison Ko, Kimberley professionals who moved here specifically knowing it would be a perfect place to raise a family. “And not only did they give me an amazing life, they exposed me and my brother Noah to a ton of art,” Ko explains. “They weren’t afraid to trip us out.”
However, the key turning point came when Alison got a camcorder for Christmas and 12-year-old Kalum asked to borrow it to shoot his ski buddies. Timely, considering that it was literally at the origin moment of both the iPhone and YouTube. Alison consented, though Jeff cautioned that Kalum would just wind up breaking it.
“He did, of course,” Jeff now laughs. But as he later wrote in a moving social post, “(Kalum) started making these beautiful films, these tiny poems that gave us goosebumps … somehow, along the way, he met generous mentors who showed him things we couldn't, like how to shoot into the sun, organize a hard drive, and rig things from trees. They climbed mountains and made films of paddling across the ocean.”
Those Kimberley-based mentors included legends like Kevin Sheppit, Bruce Kirkby, Dave Quinn, Pat Bates, Jenn Meens, Chris Ferguson, and Pat Morrow. “I got so much support from those guys and everyone else involved in the Dirtbag Festival,” Ko says, referencing the late Kimberley event that presented the best in home-brewed film and photography to a sophisticated audience of adventure lovers.
Ko fits into this milieu like a glove, his short films earning deserved kudos as he contributes to the contemporary Kootenay aesthetic. As a photographic language, this is a style perhaps first noticed in the (also late) Kootenay Mountain Culture magazine, although it’s not unreasonable to say that its look and feel is internationally pervasive in the realm of influence and marketing. As a longtime master of the genre, Ko frequently drinks from the well of jaw-dropping locations and the quirky, real-life funfests in which he grew up, and sometimes took for granted.
Not any more. While he’s still in love with the tumult and raw humanity of New York — which captivated him six years ago following stints in Vancouver, Whistler, and Toronto — Ko now takes every opportunity to come home and ski some lines with his crew. Beyond that, he is currently producing a multi-year personal art project called Close To Home that involves capturing the subtle moments that speak volumes about real life. The project earned Ko a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, enabling him to extend his vision to kitchen tables across the country.
As ever, he’ll proceed with the unshakable confidence in the idea that the most special moments are just sitting there, waiting to be documented.
“To be honest,” he admits, “a lot of this just seems like divine intervention.”
Quick Question — Shots from Ko’s short film documentary WIP/Work In Progress. He asked random New Yorkers for an answer to one question: ‘What are you chasing?'
Is There Anybody Out There? — Since graduation from Kimberley’s Selkirk Secondary, Ko has lived in Vancouver, Toronto, and now NYC. “During my first city stint, living in an apartment in downtown Vancouver, I felt the irony of being surrounded by people, yet missing the sense of community I had in Kimberley. I wanted to explore that feeling. So, I spent two weeks in the Tokyo subway system working on a project, Alone With Everyone, capturing the contrast between being among countless people and still feeling alone.”
Swipe Right — “Things are good right now,” Ko reports. “Although last year was kind of tough, work-wise. I’d even told my landlord that I would be moving out.” Fortunately, a Manhattan ad agency called Mischief, repping matchmaking website Tinder, reached out with a choice assignment that put a stop to that. The brief? Shoot with models in Los Angeles and play on the vibe of a beloved movie romance at the precise moment that love gets sealed.
Tall Order — Top photo — Ko’s project W/Towers is an ongoing personal photo essay he’s been shooting in Hong Kong. “My uncle has lived there my whole life. He played hockey on the 10th floor of a skyscraper. I first visited Hong Kong and China with my family in high school, and it was the first time I fell in love with photography and filming something other than skiing.” W/Towers captures scenes of recreation woven into the urban landscape. Bottom — Manhattan’s Chinatown, from WIP.
Go to Snow — As a teen and already a filmmaker, Ko was a budding freeskiing competitor until a frightening crash ruptured his spleen. Stepping slightly back from the mayhem allowed him to focus even more intently on producing banger edits for online ski media. “I remember once riding a chairlift and saying to my buddy, ‘I would never want to film anything that's not skiing.'" That changed, of course, but Ko’s snowsports game remains strong. In 2025, he was hired to shoot a campaign for Powder Mountain, Utah. “It was my first time shooting skiing in nearly a decade. It was a good ass kicking. I forgot how challenging it is to shoot in -30ºC and move a team around on the mountain.”
Far …
Ko has travelled to over 35 countries, including Lebanon, Nepal, Argentina, and recently Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railway. In 2017, he shot a campaign for Mercedes in Chile and Argentina, with pro photographer and friend Jason Charles Hill as the subject of the film. Top — “It was an untraditional commercial project where rather than it being heavily scripted and shot over a couple days, they just gave us the G-Wagon and open reign to explore Patagonia with a small team for two weeks. I still use this film in my portfolio almost 10 years after we shot it.” Bottom — Leh, India, 2017. “I can still hear the haunting sound of morning prayers echoing through the city, 11,000 feet up in the Himalayas.
… And Away
Top — A couple swimming in Alsek Lake. “We rafted for almost a week to it and did a shoot paddling amongst icebergs.”
Bottom — Donjek Glacier in Kluane National Park, photographed and filmed for a Yukon Wild tourism campaign. The image with the hikers was taken after a helicopter shuttle in time for sunset.
Home Grown — Once the gold standard for high-end photography, then overtaken by digital, Hasseblad cameras using medium-format film have enjoyed a renaissance on the desks of contemporary art directors. Ko has been using the time-tested technology in his years-long, still-unfinished project exploring domesticity, Close to Home. It’s a world apart from today’s snap-happy digital scene. “I’m definitely learning to be a lot more thoughtful and deliberate with every shot,” he notes. At nearly ten bucks apiece for each photo’s development, he says “you don’t exactly fire them off.”
~ Written by Kevin Brooker
Find this full-length story and more in The Trench’s Winter 2025/26 edition: