Photography in Korea

Kim, an assistant art history professor at the University of Arizona, surveys the history of Korean photography in this fascinating, dense debut. Photography was brought into the country in the late 19th century as “part of an enlightenment effort by the royal court and the intelligentsia,” and later harnessed as a propaganda tool by the Japanese during the First Sino-Japanese War. Kim explains how Korean photographers played an “instrumental role in establishing photography as an art form,” showcasing newspaper photos in avant-garde, surrealist, and modernist styles, while in the 1950s,the devastation of the Korean War gave rise to the Saenghwaljuui realism movement (“Realism Rooted in Daily Life”), which depicted citizens’ everyday struggles amid seismic postwar shifts. In addition to spotlighting influential photographers such as Cheol Hwang and Suk-Je Lim, Kim pays due to the norm-bending work of Korean feminist photographers who rebelled against the medium’s male-dominated culture by highlighting female power, as in Young-Sook Park’s photomontage of a pregnant woman, which graced the cover of an 1997 feminist magazine. Kim draws on a selection of striking images to bring alive Korean politics, foreign relations, and norms, making this both a comprehensive history of Korean photography and a worthy examination of Korean identity. Photography enthusiasts should take a look. Photos. (June)