[KS] Question on colonial photography

Yong-ho Choe choeyh at hawaii.edu
Thu Mar 3 15:53:19 EST 2005


Having grown up in a countryside in Kyongsang Province (near Taegu) in the 30s and 40s, I would say scenes of women's exposed breasts in rural Korea were not unusual, although I cannot say it was common.  I witnessed open breast feedings in public places, such as markets and public gatherings.  I hasten to add that breast-feeding mothers were also quite circumspect as whenever men were present, they would turn their backs.  Women carrying a jar or other things on head (usually middle aged or older) often exposed their breasts.


At 12:40 AM 3/3/2005, Pai hyungil wrote:
>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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Yong-ho Choe, Professor
Department of History
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Honolulu, HI  96822

Tel: 808 956-6762
Fax: 808 956-9600
E-mail: choeyh at hawaii.edu





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