HAN YOUNGSOO

A successful commercial image-maker in his later years, Han Youngsoo (1933-1999) began his work in photography after he returned to Seoul from the frontlines of the Korean War (1950-1953).The city, like the rest of the country, was devastated and impoverished. ‘After the war, still coveredwith the soot of tragedy, I found myself in the middle of civic confusion,’ Han later observed. ‘I wasstartled to find, however, the great determination of the human spirit to carry on with life—in a sensesomething simple and natural, but also ... very profound.’ In the ensuing years, Han captured thecity and its surroundings with a passionate eye for form and narrative detail, documenting both itsancient ways of life and its dramatic transformation from war-torn metropolis to a prosperous modernsociety.

Han Youngsoo: Photographs of Korea, 1956-1963 consists of two parts. Han’s small never-before seen vintage photographs are on view at Baik Art’s main gallery at 2600 La Cienega Boulevard. A selection of large, posthumous prints of Han’s most iconic images are displayed in Baik Art’s secondspace at 2632 La Cienega Boulevard. Together, Han’s bold black & white images betray therevolutionary influence of photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Marc Riboud, David Seymour(‘Chim’), Robert Frank, and Helen Levitt, while offering a fascinating window onto post-war SouthKorea and the everyday lives of its ordinary men, women, and children.