서울사진축제

Seoul Photo Festival

Overview
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Exhibition 1
Exhibition 2
Special exhibition 1
Special exhibition 2

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Overview

The Birth of Seoul’s Visual and Spatial Realms: Hanseong, Gyeongseong, Seoul – Urban History of Seoul through Photography

Foreword The Seoul Photo Festival has served as a place to have a better communication with citizens each year since its opening in 2010. This year’s festival shows how the urban images of Seoul have been established under the rubric of The Birth of Seoul’s Visual and Spatial Realms: Hanseong, Gyeongseong, Seoul. The festival sheds new light on the history of Seoul with a variety of perspectives from works that show periods of turbulence and pain to those with more delicate memories of the city, and those which look at the city from new viewpoints. The Seoul Photo Festival became a citizens’ festival of entertainment and education, a place where one can communicate through photographic and artistic works. Photographs within albums that every citizen owns opens a path for a unique mode of communication which evokes memories and sympathies for those who lived in the same period. This catalogue features your story as well as Seoul’s story as they have been. The publication shares old memories with Seoul citizens in an attempt to make Seoul a better city. 2014. 11 Park Won-soon Mayor of Seoul
Preface

The Birth of Seoul’s Visual Space: Hanseong, Gyeongseong, Seoul

2014 Seoul Photo Festival adopts a theme of “The Birth of Seoul’s Visual Space: Hanseong, Gyeongseong, Seoul”, which examines urban images of Seoul and their transformations through photography since the opening of its ports in 1876 with different names from Hanseong to Gyeongseong. The festival looks at various images of the city as well as its historical transformations through travelogues of foreigners to Joseon, photo albums,
documentary photographic archives of Seoul, official gazettes, mass media photographs, and works of professional photographers. It aims to show multiple layers of Seoul’s urban space through different themes, including modern leisure culture, war, modernization, and industrialization. This exhibition covers major elements which played a crucial role in establishing and transforming the urban views of Seoul, while providing an opportunity to ruminate on photography’s social roles and functions as historical documents.
From Hanseong to Gyeongseong
This part presents photographic materials produced from 1880s through 1945. They hint at the original landscapes of Hanseong and the period before the nation’s independence from Japan. One can obtain a clear idea of the lives and the historical circumstances in Gyeongseong at the time.
From Gyeongseong to Seoul
Through documentary photographs and artistic works of professional photographers, this section explores how Gyeongseong as a colonial capital was transformed into the current megacity called Seoul through the nation’s independence of 1945, Korean War, post-war reconstruction projects, as well as through economic modernization campaigns and urban redevelopment projects of the 1960s.
Special Exhibition 1: The Birth of Leisure
This exhibition looks at different aspects of a leisure culture through archiving picnic photographs provided by Seoul citizens, while re-visiting various picnic locations. <Section 1: Memory of Changgyeonggung> gives a glance at the transformation of modern leisure culture through images of Changgyeongwon, the representative picnic place in Seoul. <Section 2: Let’s Take a Memory-Stirring Excursion> is comprised of photographs selected through citizen’s participation.
Special Exhibition 2: A Photo Gallery in Park: A Celebration of Memory
This exhibition is a project for citizen participation which invites citizens to revisit the places within picnic photographs and to make a photographic record of their experiences. Kim Yun-ho the photographer, ZAKO, and participants have an opportunity to summon the old Seoul within the pictures and to give a new meaning to those spaces through making their own photographs.

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Information

2014 Seoul Photo Festival

Nov. 13, 2014 (Tru) ~ Dec. 13 (Sat)
Weekdays: Tue. – Fri. 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Weekends and Holidays: 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Closed on every Monday.

Guided Tour of Exhibition

English: 11 a.m. every Sunday
(Available only when reserved in advance/
E-mail for reservation:2014spf02@seoulphotofestival.com)
Charge: Free of charge

Public Lectures
The lectures for the general public plan for a better understanding of the theme and the contents of the Seoul Photo Festival. We invite experts in history of photography, sociology, history, urban planning, history of architecture, and literature to ruminate on the experience of modernity and the images of the city through spatial transformation of Seoul under the rubric of “photography, city, and modernity”.
Travel Photo Workshops
These are photo workshops with experts in different fields where one can learn about travel photography.
Participants can acquire various know-hows to catch a decisive moment of their own trip.
Making My Own Map of Seoul
An Illustrator leads this workshop. Based on illustrations of major buildings in Seoul, participants can create their own map of Seoul by methods of drawing and silkscreen.
Seoul Walking Tours :Seoul Sanbo
We invite the general public to participate in field trips to several areas of Seoul with various themes. The program is led by experts in different fields, including travel writers, rchitectural historians, poets, film directors, and literary critics.
Gyeongseong City Tour Bus
The program re-enacts the Gyeongseong City Tour Bus which ran during the 1930s. Starting from the Seoul Museum of History, one can experience the transformations of the city from Hanseong, Gyeongseong to the present Seoul by visiting major places related to the exhibition. Experts in various fields (historians, architectural historians, and sociologists) ride together so that passengers can gain knowledge of the historical origins and cultural values of the places.
Reading Seoul Through Films
The program provides an opportunity to see various images of Seoul and those of Gyeongseong as a modern city through Korean films from the 1930s to the 1950s. As a way to discover the life of the time an architectural historian gives an explanation of details in the films.
Showcase: Visual Promotion and Photo Zone
The showcase features a screening of the representative works of the festival, while operating a photo zone for visitors to the Seoul Citizen Hall where they can take pictures at tourist attractions of modern Seoul.
A Month of Photography
This event is related to the 2014 Seoul Photo Festival. It offers citizens the chance to have various experiences with photography in museums and art galleries of Seoul where different types of photography exhibitions are held.

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Exhibition 1

From Hanseong to Gyeongseong 2014 Seoul Photo Festival adopts a theme of “The Birth of Seoul’s Visual Space: Hanseong, Gyeongseong, Seoul”, which examines urban images of Seoul and their transformations through photography since the opening of its ports in 1876 with different names from Hanseong to Gyeongseong. The festival looks at various images of the city as well as its historical transformations through travelogues of foreigners to Joseon, photo albums, documentary photographic archives of Seoul, official gazettes, mass media photographs, and works of professional photographers. It aims to show multiple layers of Seoul’s urban space through different themes, including modern leisure culture, war,
modernization, and industrialization. This exhibition covers major elements which played a crucial role in establishing and transforming the urban views of Seoul, while providing an opportunity to ruminate on photography’s social roles and functions as historical documents.

This part presents photographic materials produced from 1880s through 1945. They hint at the original landscapes of Hanseong and the period before the nation’s independence from Japan. One can obtain a clear idea of the lives and the historical circumstances in Gyeongseong at the time.

01. The Original City Plan and Its Transformation

This section traces the original views of Seoul through travelogues and albums that the Westerners and the Japanese left during their visits to Joseonafter the opening of its ports in 1876. Visitors can encounter variously transforming views of the city through major buildings of the Korean Empire period and streets of diplomats surrounding Jeong-dong.
02. The Emergence of Modern Architecture

This section looks at the process in which various forms of modern architecture compete with one another thanks to Joseon’s diplomatic ties with the West, starting from the one with the U.S. in 1882. It shows photographic materials and literary works as a way to understand the newly established sense of the city.
03. Expositions: Experiments in Architectural Form

The Government-General of Korea as a propaganda hosted and sponsored numerous expositions to justify the Japanese colonial rule and its achievements. Within these expositions, various halls and galleries were built in the traditional style of Joseon architecture and in the modern styles of the West. This section explores a double entendre of colonial architectural forms which contrast the exotic taste with the advanced culture of the Japanese empire.
04. The Birth of a Colonial Capital

The basic structure of the present Seoul was made through the Gyeongseongdistrict remodeling project in 1912. The Japanese colonial government adopted a method of contrasting images of Seoul before and after the district remodeling project in order to show the process of modernization and civilization of Gyeongseong, which justified the Japanese colonial rule.
05. Colonial Tourism and Representation of Gyeongseong

The government-general of Korea organized the tourist industry and policy by placing the Railway Bureau in charge, and Gyeongseong was developed as a scenic attraction. Around major routes of the Gyeongseong tour bus which began to run in about 1930This section explores how the images of Gyeongseong were represented and the colonial layers of the routes and the tour spots.

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Exhibition 2

From Gyeongseong to Seoul 2014 Seoul Photo Festival adopts a theme of “The Birth of Seoul’s Visual Space: Hanseong, Gyeongseong, Seoul”, which examines urban images of Seoul and their transformations through photography since the opening of its ports in 1876 with different names from Hanseong to Gyeongseong. The festival looks at various images of the city as well as its historical transformations through travelogues of foreigners to Joseon, photo albums, documentary photographic archives of Seoul, official gazettes, mass media photographs, and works of professional photographers. It aims to show multiple layers of Seoul’s urban space through different themes, including modern leisure culture, war,
modernization, and industrialization. This exhibition covers major elements which played a crucial role in establishing and transforming the urban views of Seoul, while providing an opportunity to ruminate on photography’s social roles and functions as historical documents.

Through documentary photographs and artistic works of professional photographers, this section explores how Gyeongseong as a colonial capital was transformed into the current megacity called Seoul through the nation’s independence of 1945, Korean War, post-war reconstruction projects, as well as through economic modernization campaigns and urban redevelopment projects of the 1960s.

01. War and City

This section focuses on photographic views of the city during the war and the destruction of the urban space among images of Seoul during the Korean War. It exhibits different visual intersections among the views of the air strikes by the U.S. air force planes which bombed the switchyard of Yongsan; photographs of David Douglas Duncan, a war correspondent of LIFE who came to Seoul with the U.S. Marines during the recapture of Seoul from North Korean forces; war photographs of Im In-sik,Lee Kyong-Mo, and Seong Dukyung.
02. The Uninterrupted Progress

This section explores the process in which reconstruction and economic developments were represented through photographs, slogans, and charts, all of which were included in government gazettes, official records and publications from 1950s to 1970s. It shows photographs of Seong Dukyung who documented downtown districts of Seoul during the 1950s and 1960s and works by Jeon Mong-gak are exhibited, who recorded the process of the construction of Seoul-Busan Expressway as a civil engineer working in the construction sites.
03. Political Landscape

How ideological aims and achievements were intermingled into the views of Seoul during the period of ‘reconstruction’ and ‘national modernization’? This section looks at arches and statues established throughout the city and the landscape of mass mobilization during an age of slogan and catchphrase.
04. Seoul, A Good Place to Live

This section presents trends of redevelopment by period through documentary photographs which were produced through the periods of development and redevelopment, demolition and new construction, besides forced migration and settlement. It also traces the changes in Seoul’s landscape through works by professional photographers who roamed through the sites before and after the redevelopment.
05. Elusive Views of Seoul

Photographers as ‘Urban Eye’ tells the story of the city beyond itself, hinting at what kind of images we perceive and signify as those of the city now.

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Special exhibition 1

The Birth of Leisure Pre-modern leisure activity featured a form of community activities in Korea. The leisure culture came to be reshaped through the periods of post-independence, industrialization, and a five-year economic development plan of 1960s. Leisure culture was established with urban white-collar workers as main actors through its popularization and institutionalization of outdoor activity. At the same time, family picnic photographs increased in quantity thanks to the popularity of camera with the advent of family outdoor excursion culture. The special exhibition “The Birth of Leisure” consists of two parts showing modern leisure culture; ‘Memory of Changgyeongwon’which gives a glance at chronological changes and spatial transformation of the leisure culture through image of Changgyeongwon, the representative place of picnic in Seoul and ‘Let’s Take a Memory-Stirring Excursion’ which comprises photographs selected through citizen’s participation.

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Special exhibition 2

A Photo Gallery in Park: A Celebration of Memory “A Photo Gallery in Park: A Celebration of Memory” is a project for citizen participation by inviting the citizens to revisit the places within picnic photographs and to make a photographic record of the experience. With Kim Yunho,the photographer, participants have an opportunity to summon the old Seoul within the pictures and to give a new meaning to those spaces through making their own photographs. The venue is an outdoor exhibition in SeodaemunIndependence Park as a park with a photo studio or a photo studio in park where citizens have easy access. The exhibition comprises another project‘Meet through Photography: Seoul in Full View’ where ZAKO a photographersgroup re-photographs the places and subjects within the pictures with the same angle and direction. The exhibition is about these projects of re-making stories and creating a new memory of today through memorable photographs.