[KS] Terry Bennett's Photo Collection

[Kevin Smith]

Dear Colleagues,

To approach this issue from a somewhat different perspective, one might
first consider Thy Phu
<https://quod.lib.umich.edu/t/tap/7977573.0010.217?view=text;rgn=main>’s
excellent review of Bennett’s recent text, *Early Photography in Vietnam*.
Her takeaway point, which is equally relevant to Bennett’s work on Korea,
is in identifying “the book’s primary limitation: namely, its
acknowledgment of colonialism as a context in which photography in Vietnam
develops only to foreclose consideration of the impact of this context”
(par. 9).

Bennett’s book, *Korea: Caught in Time*, with a title hearkening back to
anthropologist Johannes Fabian’s notion of “allochrony” – denying
purportedly pre-modern societies contemporaneous and comparable standing
with the “West” – similarly fails to avoid the problematics outlined by
Phu. Tracing not the complex origins and trajectories of photography in
Korea but rather compiling mostly staged shots by foreigners with
Orientalist sensibilities such as Felice Beato and Isabella Bird Bishop, it
is little wonder the former text corroborates rather than critically
interrogates the colonial archive and its construction of an exotic,
timeless Korea. (I say this with due recognition of the scholarly
significance of these documents in their own right.)

These questions must be taken into account when discussing the fate of
Bennett’s undoubtedly impressive collection today. Here Cho Duck-hyun's
various archival projects, such as his *Dialogue* (대화, 1999-2000) series,
come to mind as an instructive, countervailing precedent. We might also
wish to contrast Bennett’s approach with that of photography scholar Yi
Kyeong-min, for example, to better appreciate the alternative methods and
objectives available when reconstructing Korea's visible past.

It is also surprising that no one has mentioned The Museum of Photography,
Seoul (MoPS). It houses a substantial volume of historical as well as
contemporary photographs and publishes a series entitled *Camera Work*,
which together offer one productive instance of the local preservation of
Korea’s material artifacts (although this nevertheless begs the question of
who has the means to do so, and how they were obtained).

Kevin Michael Smith
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