[KS] Question on colonial photography

[Pai hyungil]

Dear members,
In my recent research on photography in the early colonial
era, I have come across quite a few images of Korean
women, such as haenyo (diving women) and country women
with exposed breasts. Torii Ryuzo took such photographs in
the 1910's and they were included in the history of Korean
photographic albums in the 1990's. Today, I also found an
illustrated journal dating to 1911, of a Korean market
scene in full color with a main figure of a woman walking
down the road carrying a water jar with exposed breasts. 
A while back when I showed these photographs to my aunties
in their 90's (who were kids in the Taisho era), they
denied that they ever saw such women walk around like
that. Of course, they were raised as urban educated
yangban women so they may have missed something.
Was this part of the male photographers' fascination with
the exotic/erotic female ? I know there are many such
photographs over the decades in National Geographic and
probably the aesthetic goes back to Gauguin and beyond.
However, in Korea's case, is this state of undress such
village life (the cropped top is so short, they hang out
accidently), or wet nurses advertising their services? Are
their missionary accounts of women's clothing in the
nineteenth century? And if it was wide-spread, did the
custom die down with the Westernization and
Christianization? 

Hyung Il Pai
Japan Foundation Fellow
National Research Institute of Cultural Properties, Tokyo


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