2009.3.20
If you found the unveiling of the Joseon King's royal seal on Tuesday interesting, here is an exhibition to excite you -- an exhibition about the owner of the seal and the royal family of that time.
The Museum of Photography in Bangi-dong, southern Seoul is displaying the original photos of Joseon's last imperial house from 1897 to 1910 at its current exhibition, "Portraits of the Great Korean Imperial Family." Some photos are revealed for the first time.
In one of the photos, viewers can see King Sunjong, the last emperor of Joseon, busy plowing a field with his people on April 5th, 1909. It was a cultivation ceremony to sympathize with the people and encourage farming.
Along with this memorable photo, various photos of King Gojong, the 26th King of Joseon, Crown Prince Youngchin and Prince Lee Woo can be found at the exhibition.
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Another notable photograph is one featuring a woman who is said to be the last empress. This photo has been copied and fabricated so many times that the display of the original is extra meaningful.
Weirdly enough, however, all faces in the photos look grim. Perhaps an emerging theory could explain why.
According to some historians and photography researchers, The Japanese government at that time tried to damage the power of King Gojong and Joseon's imperial family by distorting the photos.
Take the photo taken by Murakami Tenshin when Japan's Crown Prince Yoshihito visited Joseon in 1907, for example. It is common sense for the figures to stand symmetrically in an official group photo, but here, the figures including Joseon's Crown Prince Youngchin are packed in the right side. It was to place Yoshihito in the center, and slightly more out in the front.
"It seems like the figures in the photo were purposely arranged like this so Yoshihito would look relatively taller, and so that Japan's intended hierarchy between the Japanese and Korean officials would stand out," said Lee Kyeong-min, a researcher at the Photo Archives Research Center, in a report regarding this exhibition.
Look at another photo of prince Youngchin and the cabinet led by Lee Wan-yong -- a pro-Japanese collaborator -- taken by the same photographer in the same year. Viewers can easily spot an awkward right arm of someone in a white hanbok, or Korean traditional costume, sticking out at the right corner of the photo.
Surprisingly, it is King Gojong's. In the original version of the photo, the king stands at the right corner with a blank look, far away from the rest of the figures. But in the photos which Japan distributed, the king is either cut out or erased.
"In the Joseon society, it was a taboo when anyone's body parts were cut off in a picture, let alone the deified king's. It must have been a very disrespectful thing to distribute a photo with more than half the body of the king cut off," said Lee.
This photo exhibition runs through June 6 at The Museum of Photography in Bangi-dong, southern Seoul. Tickets are 5,000 won. For more information, call (02) 418-1316 or visit www.photomuseum.or.kr
By Park Min-young
(claire@heraldm.com)
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