Ahn was educated at the University of Southern California, graduating with a degree in art history in 2006, followed by two years of postgraduate study of photography at the Pratt Institute.
The Parsons awarded her a Master of Fine Arts with honors in January 2012, following which she enrolled in a PhD program in photography at Hongik University in Seoul.
The project stemmed from a photograph of her feet she took while sitting on the edge of an apartment building while a student at Pratt, and has continued since.
[4] For these photographs, Ahn works by gaining access to the building legitimately - it can take several months for the owners to give permission for the project - and setting a digital camera to take a large volume of high-speed images while she poses.
These are then sifted to find a picture depicting Ahn looking unconcerned or distracted, captured in what she describes as "...a certain moment of time that did exist, but which we couldn't perceive with the naked eye because it happened too fast.