Wonders and Witness : Contemporary Photography from Korea

5 Foreword─Kim Sunghee (Director, MMCA)
7 Foreword─Todd J. Tubutis (Director, CCP)

11 Curatorial Essay: A Photographic Story of Wonders and Witness─Kim Namin
21 Contemporary Korean Seen Through Four Photographs─Kim Youngmin

29 Part 1 Walking Around a Strange City
59 Part 2 Not Just Family Matters
107 Part 3 Better Days

131 The Journey of Modern Korean Photography Post-Liberation─Park Pyungjong
139 Photography of Korea in the United States─Kim Jeehey

146 Artist Biographies
152 Contributors
154 List of Plates

The works in Wonders and Witness: Contemporary Photography from Korea are predicated on the documentary capacity of photography. However, they also carry the artist's subjective interpretation of reality, evoking thoughts and emotions in the viewer. However, what these photographs also have in common is that they maintain a certain distance. While they unveil various aspects of contemporary Korean society, they refrain from making explicit claims or offering conclusive opinions. Instead, the works offer perspectives, expressions, interpretations, and critiques of the subjects and scenes. These expressions and interpretations evolve through more intricate processes, thanks to photography's mechanical attributes, which can capture everything within their field of vision. Documents of moments where intention and serendipity coexist compel viewers to engage with their imagination and interpretation. They rouse both the power of documentation and the wonder of moments simultaneously.
Kim Namin (Curator, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea)
Curatorial Essay: A Photographic Story of Wonders and Witness

Looking at photographs is also the act of discovering something we did not know existed before. Photographers capture unexplored terrain, or magnify the beauty or contradictions of everyday life that often go unnoticed. Thanks to such photographs, viewers become aware of things they had not consciously noticed before. But even the most sensitive photographer cannot grasp everything he or she capture. The most definitive characteristic of photography is that it is indiscriminate in what it includes in its frame. Things that the photographer was not aware of are also captured in the photo. Indeed, these may only later be discovered by the audience.
In summary, a photograph is at once a record of a scene as it existed at a particular moment and a report of what might have eluded our attention. Through the four photographs being exhibited, this article aims to examine what existed in modern Korea and to shed light on aspects of the individual, gender, power, labor, and leisure within Korea's political community.
Kim Youngmin (Professor, Seoul National University)
Contemporary Korean Seen Through Four Photographs

This essay is a general summary of the developmental process of Korean photography following Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule. The process can be largely condensed down to three stages. The first is from after liberation to the 1950s, during which time realist photographs emerged advocating differentiation from the fine art photographs of the colonial period. Among them, photographs pertaining to the saenghwaljuui (everydaylife realism) movement led by Limb Eungsik emphasized the documentative nature of photography, which exerted considerable influence until the 1960s, with later attempts founded on modernist theories fading shortly thereafter due to institutional barriers. The second stage is from the 1970s to 1980s, a period marked by the predominance of documentary photographs as a paradigm. On the one hand, this period saw the mass production of amateur photographs taken in the extended context of saenghwaljuui for submission in public contests, and on the other hand, it also saw the publication of documentary photographs marked by auteurist approaches through journals and magazines. The third stage is from the 1990s and onward when contemporary art began to genuinely embrace photography into its sphere. In this stage, the boundary between art and photography became blurred, and photographic methodology also greatly expanded, ultimately resulting in photography becoming a major axis of contemporary art.
Park Pyungjong (Aesthetician and Photography Critic)
The Journey of Modern Korean Photography Post-Liberation