Category Archives: Historical

Noonbit Collection of Korean Photographer’s Works

This isn’t a review of a single book but rather a first look at a publishing initiative. Noonbit has embarked on an ambitious project of releasing a broad series of affordably priced books that expand the audience for photo-books in Korea: Noonbit Collection of Korean Photographer’s Works. The intent is for these books to be accessible, approachable and readable in the same way that novels or books of poetry are. These are nice but not lavishly produced softcover volumes with straight forward design. In late 2014 they released the first set of ten books. These ten will be followed with additional sets of ten books.

The first series of ten books is:

  • 01 DMZ, Koo Bohnchang
  • 02 The Southern Line of East Coast, Kim Geum-Soon
  • 03 On the Road, Kim Moon-Ho
  • 04 The Reason of Affection for a Walk / Zoology, Kim Bien-hun
  • 05 Daily Reduced Special Rate, Kim Jeeyoun
  • 06 Snow, Min Byun Hun
  • 07 National Song Contest, Byun Soon-Cheol
  • 08 Beach Kamami in YeongGwang, Shin Eun-Kyung
  • 09 Pumgeolri in Soyangho (lake), Im Jay Cheon
  • 10 Hands, Jun Min Cho

As may be apparent from the titles and photographers chosen, this series goes beyond simply making photography accessible: it plants a flag for a certain kind of photography: straight documentary. It also lays out an over-arching examination of “Korean-ness.” The following Wright Morris quote opens an unrelated book on landscape photography I’ve just begun reading: “The camera eye is the one in the middle of our forehead, combining how we see with what there is to be seen.” Here we have ten Korean photographers documenting different locations or subjects throughout Korea; the “how we see” extending across these books is the publisher’s vision. At a meta level, the totality of this series is (or will be) is Noonbit’s vision of Korean-ness and Korean photography. (It will be interesting to see the overlaps and divergences with the Korean photography overview project that Suejin Shin is working on.)

In a way, this series is a product of the digital age. It can be seen as a traditional media outlet’s response to websites and blogs like Lenscratch, Feature Shoot, burn or 500 Photographers. These sites present an even more affordable (free) and accessible (online, immediate) selection of photography that reaches across cultures, borders and styles. One might wonder why Noonbit didn’t make its initiative in digital space. Why not make this a long-running digital property like 500 Photographers except focused on Korean photographers? Why not make this a blog like Conscientious that presents critical context for the work?

Noonbit offers photographers the status conferred by the lasting nature of a physical book. A blog post may live forever in the cloud, but it is ultimately ephemeral, replaced endlessly by new content. A thousand (or a million!) people may see a blog post, but only as part of a flow of content. A book is an artifact in the physical world; its journey may touch only a few people but it will be a continuing fact for those people. Its physical state makes its impact longer lasting.

Both the digital and the physical have their value and their uses. I believe that an opportunity may have been missed in not making this series a marriage between the two. What rich opportunities for interaction could have been presented between the physical book and an expansive digital mirror? What kind of a community might have grown around the books? What conversations might have been sparked? How many more people might have been reached and touched by these works? The likelihood of the physical books making it to the West is slim, but a multi-lingual web platform or an app presented in conjunction with the physical books could have reached outside Korea creating a richly interactive environment to explore these photographers, their works and the contexts within which they exist.

As they are, the books are a wonderful introduction to Korean photography, or at least a subset of Korean photography. It would be wonderful if a retailer like Photo-Eye, Dashwood or the ICP’s bookshop saw fit to bring them to the US.

I’ll be writing about some of these books individually in greater detail at a later date.

(This post will be updated with images.)

Korean Cultural Service currently exhibiting Hyung S. Kim’s Haenyeo photographs

As part of Asia Week here in NYC, the Korean Cultural Service is exhibiting Hyung S. Kim’s Haenyeo photographs in its Gallery Korea. The exhibit runs through April 10th.

To keep this post apropos to the blog’s main theme, a book containing these photographs is available.

More info.

Pegasus 10000 Miles; Lee Young Jun

Pegasus10000Miles_01

Sometimes the most interesting photography books aren’t photography centric at all. One of the first books I wrote about on this blog was Seoul Essay, which used photography to illustrate and expand the written essays that were its core content. The photographs were nonetheless fascinating. Similarly, photography is only part of Pegasus 10000 Miles; written essays (in Korean only) are the primary content of the book. (I am, as ever, treading on thin ice writing about a book which I cannot read a significant portion of.)

Pegasus 10000 Miles tracks the journey of the CMA CGM Pegasus as it makes its way around the world from Dalian to Southampton (there is a handy map that shows both the route of the Pegasus and the route of the author). This ship functions as the central narrative, but the photographs and essays are not slavishly tied to it. The ship is simply an access point allowing for the entirety of sea borne global trade–historical and contemporary, to be examined and critiqued.

Since the text is lost on me, I will confine this review to a small selection of photographs and the workmanship of workroom’s design.

I bought this book, unopened, shrink wrapped and sight-unseen because of the promise of the cover photograph. A man in a red survival suit stands stiffly on a ship’s green steel deck. Behind him are a red cabinet containing a “fire hose & nozzle” and a red “Restricted Area” sign. The railings beside him and the wall behind him are stark white. It is a classic contemporary portrait redolent of adventure and modern mitigated risk. On opening the book, the promise is largely unfulfilled. There are few photographs as starkly clean as this portrait or as technically proficient. The greatest bulk of the photographs appear to be snapshots by an amateur with a unique amount of access.

There are four photographs that sum up the book. The first is a nearly abstract view of the ship heading into the sun. The sea’s undulating surface is dappled with light and looks almost like static on a television screen. In the curved wake behind the ship the surface undulates at a lower frequency and we can see the route the ship has sailed. The ship may be the subject of the photograph, but it is the metadata left in its wake that gives us the most information.

Pegasus10000Miles_02

The second image is taken from the ship’s bridge looking out across the rows of stacked shipping containers. The ship is coming into a port. Along the waterfront there are no less than 22 cranes for loading and unloading cargo. Several ships are already docked and being either loaded or unloaded. There are clearly many such ships plying the world’s waters and a complex high-tech infrastructure built around them.

Pegasus10000Miles_03

On the next spread we see another cargo ship, the MSC Savona, chartered out of Monrovia, coming into port in Hong Kong (or perhaps Xiamen). This ship is even larger than the CMA CGM Pegasus–it is twenty container columns across rather than eighteen. The ship takes up nearly the entire foreground of the photograph, one can barely see the sea to either side of it. Its stacks of cargo containers neatly echo the apartment towers in the background. Two related readings of this photograph that spring immediately to mind: The city as we know it today is directly tied to the global commerce embodied in these ships. Modern life–particularly modern urban life, is significantly defined by the consumer culture represented by these ships. Without global trade, modern life would not exist as we know it.

Pegasus10000Miles_04

The fourth photograph I want to talk about is of a man repairing some piece of machinery. He is perched awkwardly on a ledge and reaching into an oblong opening, which does not seem intended to be an access point. What at first appears to be blue wiring is actually nylon rope. To this point, nearly the entire focus of the photographs has been on the physical enormity of the ship, its advanced technological aspects and the complex system of ports and shipping lanes of which it is a part. Here we are seeing that for all of its marvels, it is still men who make these ships go (and who built them, for that matter). When something breaks, someone has to fix it. The photograph is one of only half a dozen or so photographs of the ship’s crew and the only one in which someone is actively doing something.

Even without the text, Pegasus 10000 Miles is a fascinating and charming glimpse into global shipping. If one were interested in shipping primarily and wanted facts rather than photographs, being unable to understand the text would be a greater concern.

Pegasus 10000 Miles
Lee Young Jun
workroom
2012

A Conversation with Kyusang Lee and Misook Ahn of Noonbit

MNM: This is Michael Meyer, the publisher and writer of KoreanPhotographyBooks.com; I am sitting here with Lee Kyusang and Ahn MiSook of Noonbit Publishing Co. as well as my wife, Ji Young Lee who will be translating and asking follow up questions. Mr. Lee and Ms. Ahn, let’s start with the easy questions: what is the history of Noonbit and your background in photography. Were you photographers, or editors, or, before beginning Noonbit, did you come from another division in publishing?

Kyusang Lee: Originally, what we studied was Korean literature and writing. As you know, every Korean male must serve in the army, so I did too. After I finished studying I became an editor in a publisher producing art books. My wife, who is the chief editor… Continue reading →

A Conversation with Suejin Shin

Michael N. Meyer: This is Michael Meyer, the publisher and writer of KoreanPhotographyBooks.com; I am sitting here with Suejin Shin, who is the Creative Director of the Ilwoo Foundation, and a Research Professor of Yonsei University.

Suejin Shin: Right.

Jimin Han: And a director of Lamp LAB, brand-new [laughter].

MNM: And also with me is Jimin Han, who is translating for me and interjecting follow up questions. Suejin, let’s start with your background. You have multiple degrees in photography and in psychology. How did you come to bring those two things together? How did you come to use psychology as a lens to understand and expand upon photography?

Suejin Shin, Lamp LAB, Seoul

Suejin Shin at Lamp LAB, November 2014

SJS: My first major was psychology, and my second major was photography. I then got a master’s degree in photography and a PHD in psychology. My studies of photography were primarily in photographic theory. I’ve never intended to be a professional photographer. In studying psychology my focus was on vision, or visual perception, and Cognitive Science. I simply followed my curiosity in studying the two; I wondered what kind of feelings or thoughts people have when they see photographic images. It’s about what people feel when they see images. It’s about feeling, or the process of thinking. In other words, when they see certain images, they come to have certain feelings or thoughts. My main interest lies in where they come from.

Generally, the background fields of art theory are commonly art histories or something similar; so, many people wonder how psychology can be applied to these fields. I’m interested in photographic images, but it is the audience I observe in order to realize my interest.
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Does Spring Come to Stolen Fields, Chung Ju-ha

Does Spring Come to Stolen Fields fairly brims with nuanced intent. It is a book with a mission.

The photographs in Does Spring Come to Stolen Fields are, for the most part, lyrical pastoral scenes taken in Fukushima and its surrounds in the year after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. There is a quiet that descends over the mostly depopulated scenes. In much the same way that the poem from which this book takes its title is a poem of protest only in its opening and closing lines, it is only in the foreword and afterword that this book makes its clearest protests. The photographs may be at once beautiful and unsettling, but they are indirect. It is only through the thoughtful polemics by Han Hong-koo and Suh Kyung-sik that the full weight of their protestation becomes evident.

Two photographs in particular bring the book’s main theme into clear focus: In the first, a persimmon tree dominates the foreground with an orchard spreading out behind it. Dozens of ripe fruits hang heavy on the tree. In the background, dozens, perhaps hundreds, of equally ripe fruits await a harvest that will never come. The midday sun of everyday, any day, highlights the tree’s tangle of branches and the carpet of unmown grass below it. In the second, a ruffled beach recedes into the distance. Round stones and bits of small debris litter the sand. Two hardscrabble pine trees stand resolutely in the center of the frame. Waves roll in without end from the left. An empty, low and brown field extends from the trees right out to the background. In the far distance, straight out the shoreline, sit the boxy shapes familiar from newscasts of the Fukishima disaster.

What future do these lands have? Even as the disaster recedes into the past, its effects remain present. The news cameras may have moved on but despite significant clean up efforts the fallout of the disaster will not disappear any time soon.

In his afterword, Suh Kyung-sik recounts a young farmer stopping the group that he and the photographer were traveling with to berate them for coming to make their pictures but not doing anything to help the people who have been most directly affected. This highlights a central problem with a book like this: It’s impact will likely be limited. However good a photographer’s intentions, however strong the photographs, however horrific their subject it is difficult for photographs alone to move people to create change. Photographers have been showing us in detail the horror of war for a century and a half and yet we’re no closer to ending war.

Chung counters this problem in two ways. This book is not a one off exercise. It is part of the photographer’s ongoing interest in and concern with the peace movement’s opposition to the nuclear industry. Chung has previously published two books on the topic of nuclear power. His earlier publications were meant to show the insidious threat that we have become complacently inured to. Does Spring Come to Stolen Fields is a tragic extension of these earlier projects. More importantly, Chung partners with others working in the peace and non-proliferation movements. His photographs and books are meant to be bricks in a larger struggle.

And, struggle or protest is exactly what these photographs are. The book’s title is drawn from the poem Does Spring Come to Stolen Fields that was published in 1926 by Lee Sang-hwa. The poem led to the shuttering of the magazine Gaebyeok in which it was first published and in Lee’s arrest for anti-Japanese activities. The poem was an absolutely anti-colonial protest against the Japanese occupation.

At first glance, a Korean poem protesting the Japanese occupation of Korea a century earlier might seem an odd or even errant choice as a primary reference point for a book calling attention to the fallout from a present day natural disaster in Japan. Han and Suh both take pains to elucidate how the reference is both valid and useful. Suh in particular teases out interesting inferences from the comparison.

By TEPCO and the Japanese government’s estimates, it will take decades for the Fukushima Daiichi reactors to be fully shut down. Radiation will be a problem for decades longer, if not centuries. The fallout from this disaster will long reverberate–much as the fallout from the Japanese occupation of Korea has reverberated in national politics and personal histories for the last 100 years. In this mirroring of long-term fallout, Suh sees the seeds of dialogue towards the finding of common ground.

Lee’s poem was a protest against the occupation–in particular the theft of Korean lands in the name of increased productivity. The Fukushima disaster might not be a colonial occupation, but it presents a situation in which the national government in cahoots with powerful industrial lobbies has stolen peoples’ lands. There is right and there is wrong. When wrongs are perpetrated against the people, the powerful, whether working through the guise of a foreign or domestic government, must be held accountable to the people.

Accountability is a tricky endeavor, however. Chung, Han and Suh are all aligned against the nuclear industry and its supporters in government. The nuclear industry goes back to World War II. In this way the Japanese become the first victims of the nuclear industry–as well as the perpetrators of gross human rights violations throughout Asia. Han and Suh both point out that the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Nagasaki and Hiroshima do not excuse the country for its brutal actions that led to the deaths of millions throughout Asia. Conversely, the wrongs perpetrated against Korea during the occupation do not allow Koreans to wash their hands of what has happened at Fukushima and to ignore the present day victims of this present nuclear disaster. However fraught a relationship might be, a natural/nuclear disaster cannot in good conscience be read as retribution, though nor should it absolve a country of past wrongs or obviate the need for apology.

(As a side note: the intended audience for this book is primarily domestic, i.e. Korean. When I write that Koreans cannot wash their hands of what has happened at Fukushima, it would be equally fair to read that as “the international community cannot wash its hands of the disaster.” This is a disaster for all humanity. Likewise, the threat and opportunity of nuclear energy is a something that must be considered by all humanity.)

All of this cannot be communicated by the photographs alone. Chung’s photographs show the landscapes stolen by the disaster: fields that can no longer be tilled, orchards that cannot be harvested, homes that cannot be lived in, highways that cannot be followed and beaches that cannot be enjoyed. Nature herself continues on. Weeds poke through the pavement of a bridge. Birds wheel overhead. Flowers erupt from beneath frost. The ocean rolls and rolls and rolls onto the beach.

In one photograph of a nursing home interior, the high water line reaches nearly to the clock mounted high on the wall. The paint above the line is clean, except where water has splashed. Below, the wall is a fractal mess of dried mud, and the floor is coated in silt left by the receding water. Suh relates his experience of seeing this photograph for the first time and of Chung relating that the clock continued to run as if nothing had happened. This building can no longer accommodate human activity and yet time has gone on. The clock continues to run. Even once its battery gives out, time will still flow.

Spring will come to the fields in Chung’s photographs, but it will matter little to those from whom they’ve been stolen.

Does Spring Come to Stolen Fields
Chung Ju-ha
Essays: Han Hong-koo and Suh Suh Kyung-sik
Published by Noonbit Publishing Co.
2012

Portraits of 77 Literary Persons, Han Young-hee

Straightforward, subject driven, simply lit black and white photographs of the real world and the real people in it are not in vogue. Han Young-hee’s Portraits of 77 Literary Persons doesn’t change this. Han is an old school newspaper photographer. He began his career at the Hankook Daily in 1972 and moved to the Chosun Ilbo in 1981. The portraits in this book were made in the last two years of the 20th century, and the book was published in 2001.

These photographs are unlike Stephen Pyke’s Philosophers, Avedon’s In the American West or Platon’s recent portraits of power. They are also unlike JeongMee Yoon’s Pink and Blue Project or Kim Gang Sil’s Off-Line project. There is no singular style to unify the portraits. Rather, they are united in their subject matter, writers, and the humdrum daily spaces from which these people craft their words. There is little artistic ego but much delight. Han clearly enjoys being with his subjects and making these photographs.

The publisher’s website describes the Han’s portraits as being of “everyday surroundings of authors where their literature originates…the studies where they write, houses and rooms where they live in, and surrounding natural environment that gives birth to their literary sentiments.” The publisher calls the writers “representative;” one can assume this means that they are from a cross-section of genres, styles and generations.

In his introduction to the book, the poet Hwang Ji-u states that Han’s photographs display “a constant aesthetic intention to be something more than plain photographs of writers’ faces to be used for the press.” Too often, the photographs instead feel like unconsidered snapshots. Perhaps the plain photographs of writers’ faces might imbue a sense of the iconic and instill a kind of reverence. Han’s photographs point to the banality of creativity. The portraits rarely make me wonder who these people are and what wonders their pens produce. I do not feel the weight of genius.

Clearly these portraits are meant for posterity, primarily. The writers are Writers. The value of the photographs and of the book as a whole is as historical document. There are a handful of photographs that rise above the rest, that work as portraits and as photographs.

Park Kyung Ri looks out of the frame. Her hands cover her mouth as though she is trying to hold back some thought–or perhaps she just wants to hide her mouth. Her cotton shirt blends softly with the gray background.

Park Wan Suh, wearing a cone shaped hat, squats in the grass. He is trimming the grass with a pair of scissors. It is unclear if he is illustrating a point, making a joke or simply engaging in daily routine.

Yang Gui Ja sits serenely on a throne–actually, a pile of plastic chairs. The frame is filled with plastic chairs stacked on a walkway. She looks across the frame, her hands folded demurely in her lap, her legs crossed and her feet a foot from the ground. Her black dress forms a dark void that offsets the geometric lines and shapes repeating in the stacked white chairs.

Yang Sung Oo sits on a stone step before a white door. The door’s glass panes reflect bare tree branches against the sky, a church (?) and the edge of the awning or gable beneath which he is sitting. We wears a dark coat and a paisley scarf. His hands rest in his lap; one hand gently holds the index finger of the other. He has a slight smile and looks out at something just to the left of the camera. I am reminded of Paul Strand’s photographs from Vermont.

Lee Moon-koo stares at the camera. One arm is folded across his chest and rests in the crook of the other, which holds a cigarette, outstretched fingers against his cheek. He holds himself with an air of both authority and insouciance. He is wearing a cap and a dark coat over a striped dress shirt. Around him pedestrians are blurred as the negotiate their way around him. The novelist is still.

Lee Jae Ha sits in a folding chair center frame. Han’s wide angle lens takes in the writing table with two computers and stacks of papers off to Lee’s left and the framed, piled and half finished artworks on his right. Light pours in the glass door behind him; a clock is on the wall above it. Lee looks away from the camera; his left leg is crossed over his right; his left hand holds a cigarette; a sandal dangles from his left foot.

Chong Hee Sung sits in the midst of rows of grade school desks. The slightly downward and oblique camera angle turns the desks into a skewed grid crossing the frame. Chong’s right hand rests on the desk in front of him; he leans back slightly onto his left arm, its elbow on the desk behind him. Middle gray dominates the tonal scale; soft light from the right of the frame illuminates Chong, and he looks towards it. His expression is measured, thoughtful perhaps.

In images like these and a handful of others there ate the threads of narrative. The viewer is given material with which to weave an identity for the subject of the portrait. (I am making the leap and the assumption that the descriptive threads are apt.) In these portraits the “consistent aesthetic intention” is evident and the importance of the sitters apparent.

The book, as a whole, works wonderfully as an historical document of the Korean literary scene at the end of the 20th century. A number of the photographs stand on their own as richly appointed portraits that convey a psychological measure of their subjects. In these photographs, the everyday surroundings are indeed suggestive of their literary sentiments. The great bulk of the portraits do not rise to this level; they are rather humdrum snapshots that are elevated solely by the elevated status of their subjects.

If one’s shelves are filled by photography books with a slant towards portraiture, Han’s photographs will likely underwhelm. If one has a love for Korean literature and shelves filled with that literature then Portraits of 77 Literary Persons would be a fascinating addition to those shelves.

77 Portraits of Literary Persons
Photographer: Han Young-hee
Essay: Hawng Ji-u
Publisher: Youl Hwa Dang
2001

On The Line, ed. Shin Suejin

Here in American it is Memorial Day Weekend. It is the official start of the summer driving season. BBQ grills are on overdrive, and nearly everyone is gathered around one. In Brooklyn the cyclists are out in droves, and the mood is festive. The skies are blue. And, oh by the way, the weekend is meant to provide an opportunity to memorialize those who have given everything to preserve this country in the many (military) struggles it has been engaged in and to reflect upon their sacrifice.

To extend this memorializing and reflection to another country and another culture is dangerous. To even broach the raw emotions of contemporary politics is more dangerous still (and rude). Well, so be it.
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xyZ City, workroom

As I’ve noted in the past, I’m a bit of an urban planning geek. It comes from my grandfather who was involved with local government. I find the urban space endlessly fascinating. A proper city is always in a state of flux. Blink and the city changes. This interest is reflected on my bookshelves and my personal photographic archive. I dig cities.

It’s no wonder then that I was drawn to workroom’s xyZ City, though I’m not entirely clear what the book is. An illustrated treatise? An exhibition catalog? An exhibition in book form? There is no English text, so I’m left with the title, layout and photographs themselves to decipher it.
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The Memories of Floating Times, Kim Youngsoo

The topic of urban housing has lately been popping up across all of the media that I consume. Given that fact, I was planning to write about Chanmin Park’s Blocks today as it would fit the trend. When I went to pull it off of the bookshelf, I pulled another book instead. The Memories of Floating Times just called to me to take it down off the shelf. I am not sure why this unassuming book that I’d never taken much note of grabbed my attention today, but it did. Blocks will have to wait another week.

The Memories of Floating Times isn’t so off topic from urban housing. Two articles I came across today seem particularly apropros lead ins to TMoFT: Stan Banos on his Reciprocity Failure blog linked to this PBS NewsHour segment on how Google’s busing of workers has become a hot button issue in regards to gentrification in San Francisco; at the NY Times, this article lays out how a young state assemblyman and his protege helped keep a Lower East Side (NYC) lot vacant for nearly half a century in order ostensibly to maintain the demographic make up of a neighborhood in order to solidify their political base.

How do we get from San Francisco and New York to Korea? TMoFT‘s very brief introductory text in English (there is a much more comprehensive text in Korean) describes the photographs in the book as capturing “the vivid realities of the back streets’ scenery of Korean society when it had just entered into rapid industrialization.” What comes after the photographs in this book is a welcoming of the kind of gentrification being bemoaned in San Francisco and an abhorrence of the kind of delay and foot dragging represented by Silver and Rapfogel in New York. The pace of building has been swift (if not always without dissent or missteps)

After a lengthy essay, the photographic plates begin. We are first greeted by a boy in his early(?) teens with a black eye staring rather balefully directly into the camera. He is followed by two delivery boys, one holding a still common delivery container for Chinese food and the other with a roll of newspapers tucked under his arm. The portraits continue: a barista (this isn’t last week?!), two students carrying leather briefcases that scream “Yuppie!”, a topless woman, a cop, a mailman, an ajashi, a woman in a hanbok, a monk smoking a cigarette, an ajumma, a motorcycle deliveryman, a man with a contorted face, a man in a dirty camouflage shirt and rubber gloves, a bearded old man in traditional Korean garb, a clean shaven old man in western garb, a young girl in a hanbok, a chef who looks away. All but a handful are three quarter length formal portraits in front of a gray studio backdrop. Like all of the photos on the book, they are taken on 35mm film and printed (and reproduced in the book) with the filed out film carrier showing a rebate running around the photograph.

We move outdoors; more portraits: an ajashi in an alley, two women cooking behind him; a taxi driver draped nonchalantly on the hood of his taxi; a motorcycle cop, traffic dense behind him; a bell hop standing tall; a soldier also standing tall; an ajashi in a dirty button down shirt with enormous lapels; a hip young(ish) woman in a leather jacket standing in front of racks of cloths looking fiercely into the camera; a man through a narrow window; a man in a record shop (or radio studio?); a man behind a barred window; a man in front of a fenced off area; a bartender, a woman, a boy holding a tiger mask over his face; a little person, hands in his pockets; a cobbler, his glasses askew; three men selling watches out of doors; a goateed man wearing a dock workers cap selling wind-up toys; an old man holding a creased Korean flag; a lunch counter waiter sitting on the ground on a folded newspaper outside of his booth; a man in jacket and slacks sitting slackly on the ground and covering his face with his hand; a poor person in dark rags hunched over a square bin, his head down, his back to a wall of heavy stone blocks; a man without shoes laying on the ground with his head in a large basket; a man in tattered cloths leaning against a pole that splits the photograph left and right, his back to the camera, a more affluent crowd walking towards the camera left of the pole; a man splayed on the ground (drunk? fallen?) wrapped around a pole. I could be just as easily cataloging the people I saw on the street in Seoul two weeks ago as those portrayed in Kim’s photographs. I am reminded, too, of August Sander, though without the formality or pomp.

Objects, one tightly composed still life per spread on the right hand page: dead bird, fish heads, shoes, dead plant, tattered kettle, ice covered cigarette advert, vinyl and hand lettered sign; rough metal surface rich with texture.

And now vignettes: a stack of books held under an arm; the train of a wedding dress splayed on a curb; a memorial; a door with a cross; the torn remnant of a paper poster pasted on a pole; a cafe; an old door; a door with six padlocks; burlap flaps over windows; a worn out chair; a worn out easy chair in a dilapidated building; a radio tied to the wall; another dead plant; a bare light bulb above cooking utensils; a rudimentary kitchen; a broken clock beside a flue(or an oven?); a pigeon alighting from garbage cans; a brick corner; an outdoor platform; urinals (the first image in the book to run across the gutter); a well (?); a make shift wooden foot bridge crossing a stream; a bus painted entirely white; inside the white bus; another bus resting headlong against a pile of boxes; another old bus shoved to the side of the road surrounded by bushes and covered with a tarp; yet another dilapidated bus burnt out and resting on its side; a burnt out car without wheels; a pile of cardboard and carts in front of a mural; a cart leaning against a pine tree; a sagging patched shingle wall; canvas tents and canvas fence with tall buildings in background. The American photographer Walker Evans comes to mind when I look at these images.

More vignettes: bedding, patterned, plain, plaid, folded and wrapped; a tangle of traditionally roofed buildings; an aperture through a variegated, patched and improvised building; a low slung concrete building, its corrugated steel roof leading back to the traditional roof of the building behind it; an alleyway and an electric pole; looking out over the roofs of a knotted neighborhood; refuse and debris; the narrow side elevation of a building; a stairway; layered roofs; an alleyway curving into the light; a door beneath a rock; a door from a cockeyed angle; the side of a building with a pole beside it; the side of a building dappled by the shadow of sunlight filtering through the branches of a tree and with a pole in front of it; a corrugated steel fence; two discarded sofas, a wall and a tree; building seen from a low vantage point; building seen from a high vantage point; rain falling on traditional tiled roofs; looking downhill on a tight knot of traditional tiled roofs; hazy view of tile roofed buildings seen from above; second hazy view of tile roofed buildings with a hazier set of buildings further in the distance; a canal with a new road and contemporary concrete block building behind it (this is the second photograph that runs across the gutter); two trees behind a wall (also running across the gutter).

The book’s final chapter comprises more photographs of buildings. I am going to conclude this review with a few thoughts on one image, the first image, in this chapter. The photographs is of a partially roofed outdoor market. We are in the first of two arcades, looking through it towards the second. Above us, the roof is missing a number of it’s corrugated fiberglass panels. The second three story arcade is similarly roofed. The photographic frame compresses it’s three delta roof line so that it merges and blends into the second story of the arcade we are in. The center of the photograph is a clear, paper white, blown out section of sky. It is shaped like an invading UFO from Asteroids. This clean space brings to mind–in my mind, the future. In the midst of the clutter of the present, an image of the future is being constructed. In the midst of the clutter of these images is the foundation of the coming future that is now the present.

The Memories of Floating Time
Kim Youngsoo
Essay by
Published by Youl Hwn Dang Publisher
1997
Printed in Korea