[KS] Question on colonial photography

[Hyaeweol Choi]

I’ve encountered similar pictures in missionary journals and photo collections. Here is an interesting cross-cultural explanation by a seasoned missionary, Annie Baird (Presbyterian mission, stationed 1891-1916), who relates “the objectionable gap” (between jacket and skirt) to motherhood and urges western women to think about how Korean women might perceive the rather revealing evening dresses at western-style parties. The quotation below is from Baird’s book, entitled Inside Views of Mission Life (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1913), pp. 18-19.

 

“Until the introduction of Christianity the one reason in Korean minds for the existence of women was the exercise of the maternal function. To be a mother was their one claim to consideration, and they were accustomed to dress in a way to present the least possible obstruction to the frequent nourishment of their little ones. The exposure that resulted was a never ending offense to a vigorous old lady from Kentucky who spent several years in Seoul. She used to descend bodily on women thus unattired whom she met on the street, and make energetic though futile attempts to pull their skirts and jackets together across the objectionable gap, scolding the meanwhile in good round English, not one word of which the victims could understand. I never had any reason to think that she accomplished anything beyond a strong impression on the mind of the assaulted one that this must be a foreign devil of a peculiarly violent type, and I used to wonder what these same women would have thought could they have seen a crowd of Southern or Northern “quality” gathered together for an evening dance. What explanation would they have regarded as sufficient to account for the unseemly lack of attire and the unheard of familiarity of the attitudes?”

 

Hyaeweol Choi

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: Koreanstudies-bounces at koreaweb.ws on behalf of Pai hyungil 
	Sent: Thu 3/3/2005 3:40 AM 
	To: Korean Studies Discussion List 
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	Subject: [KS] Question on colonial photography
	
	

	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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