HAN YOUNGSOO

Han Youngsoo was a member of the Shinsunwhue group of photographers, whose first exhibition in 1957 declared them 생활주의 사진(saenghwalchuŭi sajin) or ‘everyday life’ photographers. In Seoul, they documented the resurrection of a destroyed city. Attention came to the Shinsunwhue group by way of the Edward Steichen-curated traveling exhibition, The Family of Man, which traveled from MoMA in New York to the Gyeongbok Palace Museum in Seoul in 1957, among dozens of global venues. These two events coincided to introduce South Korea to photography as an art form for the first time. Han’s vision of postwar Korea has since become definitive.

Han often photographed women at work, quietly refuting popular images of Korean women as passive and long-suffering that had proliferated under Japanese occupation. While poor, the women in Han’s images are empowered, strong, and capable. They simultaneously carry children and loads to market, going about their business without interference from Han’s camera. Han’s realist technique, gleaned from the study of artists like Steichen and Henri Cartier-Bresson, captures the life of the street as it unfolds. Through composition and perspective, Han creates narratives contrasting tradition with modernity, interdependence with independence.