Baak was born in 1967 in South Korea and emigrated to the United States at the age of 9. After University of Michigan, Baak moved to New York to pursue photography. In 1998, Baak relocated to Paris. First solo exhibition took place in Galerie Vu in Paris in 2002, followed by exhibitions at galleries and museums in Amsterdam, Istanbul, Los Angeles, New York, Milan, Seoul, Moscow, and Brussels. Baak’s first book Là ou Ailleurs was published in Paris in 2006 by the French publisher, Robert Delpire, followed by Photographs by HUP Gallery in Amsterdam in 2008, and One Last Goodbye by Wonderlust Press in Paris in 2016. Baak’s work is in the collections of Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, George Eastman Museum, JP Morgan Chase Art Collection in New York, Wilson Centre of Photography in London, and Bibliothèque Nationale de France.