Scribblings of the Metropolitician

Woman as Consumer and the Consumed

I wanted to present some shots that were a bit more than rescues from the edit bin, but perhaps not so usable as standalone images. Placed together and discussed, these photographs provide ample food for discussion about the ways in which women's bodies are both objects and conduits of consumption.

Some parts of this topic have been covered in previous posts about the social status of women the commodification of their bodies, but I just wanted to point out a few things here visually. When I talk about the 도우미 (doumi - "assistants" who can be found in everything from grocery stores to ones singing rooms), people often ask me why they bother me so much. To reiterate a point I made in a previous post, it's the saturation of the doumi into the realm of the everyday and mundane that is so insulting – to both the customers and the workers themselves.

Of course, I am making a value judgement and perhaps seem like I am engaging in a condescending discourse about these women. But I am not irritated because I "feel sorry" for them or I am fighting for some notion of their human rights; I simply think that the simple equation of baring flesh for the sake of selling toothpaste and razor blades just cheapens the whole enterprise for everyone. When I say this, I acknowledge that "sex sells" and that hot models are the standard eye candy of choice for trade, car, and electronics shows the world over. Still, hiring a model who is a larger-than-life figure showcasing a larger-than-life product or prototype somehow seems appropriate, whereas watching dozens of women who look like my cousin or niece hawking the most everyday and mundane of objects just seems ineffective and demeaning.

In the picture above, what strikes me is the constant hawking, the fetish wear, and the women, women, women. Maybe it's my foriegner's eye, but I also have a little history on the situation. Around 10 years ago, when I was first in Korea, these "models" were around, but they were there to roll out a new type of beer, or were providing the aesthetic support for a new product launch. They weren't standing in every aisle of the grocery store, handing out chunks of cheese samples, or handing out flyers.

The other thing I notice is that most of the women doing this job don't seem to be very happy doing it. One telltale sign that this isn't considered "good work" even by the people doing it is that fact that the models who work car shows or the launch of the latest, greatest MP3 player at an electronics show are more than happy to pose for pictures. In fact, that's understood to be part of the job. They add flash to the whole affair, since they are larger-than-life people, and the events they are hired for are, by their very nature, special. But selling cooking oil or Spam™ using similarly techniques is inevitably demeaning. Perhaps not in an direct, humiliating way – but importantly, these models in the stores and streets are generally not happy about posing for the camera, as if this was a job that they would rather stay off the resume.

It's just a feeling I get, but it's a pretty strong one. The job is unappreciated, their presence is anything but larger-than-life, and it's hard work, actually. I feel somewhat guilty about taking pictures, but I do it to make images to capture this feeling I get, that something is very wrong here. And also that this phenomenon of young girls in short skirts selling almost everything money can buy is new and unusual for even this society. Of course, it's subjective and informed by my identity as an American, but there's something very not right about this situation, and I think it's the sort of thing one might not notice if one were a complete member of the group. My hope is that maybe if someone from the outside points it out in a different way, a few people on the inside might stop and go, "Hmmm. That is a bit strange, come to think of it."

Such was the power of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America or Gunnar Myrdal's classic An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy; it took a Frenchman and a Swede to point out some what some might now say were obvious and interesting aspects of American culture. De Tocquville's work is still read and highly valued for his razor-sharp insight into the American character that still holds true even today. He is still endlessly quoted to this day, as his insight still hold a lot of water. In this way, people within their own culture are often blind to a lot of it, in much the same way as a fish can't see the water that sustains it, nor do humans think of the air that literally holds them together as anything other than "empty."

Kudos to a sharp reader

This is in response to a sharp and insightful post written in response to my somewhat shoddy piece on migrant workers for the Korea Herald. Both my prose and my approach should have been sharper, better thought out. As it was, a reader named Tres caught me with my proverbial pants down, pointing out some problematic aspects of the way I set myself up in relation to others who focus on or do work in the same area. Here are Tres's words:

Do you notice how many times in this piece you say that you "just" want to do something? As you continuously strive for some elusive golden mean, avoiding the electrified "sides" as if life where some game of Berzerk, you can't help but impugn everyone else but yourself and the subjects that have had the good fortune to fall under your gaze, as you claim a pure ground where you merely want to "just" do something or other. While you show a keen analytical mind elsewhere, your belief in obtaining some sort of meaning that is "just" one thing or another, whilst everyone else is on some corrupted, dogmatic, and partisan side, is both disappointing and disingenuous. You provide a perfect representation of the most damning of centrist ironies: that the main ideological proposition of centrism is that there is no ideology at all.

Either the mistreatment of these workers is an institutionalized problem or it isn't - and if it is, why should pointing that out and then fighting against that necessarily portray the workers as "hapless victims"? It doesn't. While Korean political activists who work hand in hand with the migrant workers may not provide photo spreads of "a day in the life of..Mr. Migrant Worker X", that doesn't mean that they condemn these workers to the status of "hapless victim." The broad brush you use is both unfair to activists and overly sympathetic to yourself. According to your formulation, those who want to participate in this social movement are damned if they do and damned if they don't. They should all just go get some cameras and just take pictures... right?

I noticed this line of thought in your earlier piece on prostitutes, but i hedged commenting, even after the premise you tried to spell out in your "just reporting" via the voice of the happily employed working woman (moralists are stupid/activists are clueless/working women are doing just fine, thanks) was blown out of the water by recent news of Korean women being lured into indentured servitude in the United States. Now that I see this seems to be your standard m.o. I can't help but offer my thoughts, though generally people convinced of their unideological purity usually seem emboldened by criticism from those perceived to be stained with the sin of being on "a side."

Regardless of my complaints... your work is indeed engaging, and for that, you certainly deserve praise and encouragement. I'll definitely be checking back regularly.

My response: you've hit the nail on the head and I have to give you kudos for pointing out a valid point regarding my point of view and approach to advocating for social change. One of the major concerns I have in all of my work is that of trying to fairly portray my subjects while criticizing or otherwise representing them. Since I consider myself more than just a photojournalist possessed of a dedication to an idealistic notion of objectivity, I definitely do have an agenda in all my work, both visual and otherwise. My goal is that of somehow effecting or helping in the effort to bring about social change. However, at odds with this is the fact that I have to somehow represent a certain subject (visual or thematic) somewhat "accurately" or at least fairly even as I engage in critique of that very subject.

It's a hard line to walk, and when I step over the line, it sometimes means that I can fall into a tendency to set up a straw man to knock down on the one hand, or for me to fall into an overly safe sense of false "objectivity" that can get me into trouble. As it is, I tend to err on the side of the former, as I have more than once been caught being preachy and sanctimonious. But this is why I try to check myself – by running my photographs and ideas past different types of Korean folks, or trying to bounce my little pet theories off and around different types of folks, and also by maintaining this blog.

The Korea Herald piece, actually, is not some of my best photography, nor is it an example of writing that I am particularly proud of. Some of my ideas about the issue of migrant workers are a little half-baked and come off for what they are – the product of someone who had not thought long and hard about this issue before being assigned to cover the story, combined with the fact that my research was necessarily "crash course" in its depth.

But when you put something out there, you gotta claim responsibility for it, which I do. Tres, you're right, and your sharp insights zeroed right in on a trap that I find myself falling into – that of defining a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" conundrum for everyone who is simply not...me.

Interracial Dating III: Flamewar

Sounds like good social documentary meets sci-fi summer blockbuster, right?

"Wrong. Dead wrong."

"Blujives" has heated up the debate that he actually started from his reading of my essay about identity politics and interracial dating in Korea – he's now brought the conversation down the level of pure invective by calling me an "Uncle Tom."

Needless to say, I don't like being called racist names, especially when the purpose of my post was to call people out for being racist. However, Bluejives seems to think that sounding the timeout bell and pointing a critical finger at prejudices within the Korean American community is unacceptable behavior. Apparently, Asian Americans are such consummate victims at the hands of white society that they are above reproach or critique.

Since I don't want to bring the war onto the front page of this blog, I'll just point you to it and leave it up to you as to whether to want to get into the details. I will say that the flamewar gets pretty hot by the end, which might be a draw for those of you who rubberneck on the highways after accidents (like most of us).

Bootlegs and B-Sides...

I decided to take this opportunity to publish a couple of pictures that never quite made it out of the "edit" pile, as there were technical problems with camera shake, focus, or shutter speed. Both shot were taken on the fly, and there are many failed shots in my large collections of negatives.

The first image was the result of a seeing a woman in a kimono walking down the steps of the main area of the Kyeongbokkung Palace, happening to strike a pose that seemed poignant at the moment. What with the history of the place, the memories of Japanese colonialism, and this rare moment that allowed for a really interesting composition, I took the shot, but my haste resulted in camera shake ruining it. Still, the shake kinda makes the image look like a watercolor painting. But I couldn't use that rationalization to convince myself that this was an unmistakably good shot. I don't know - I wish I had had the time to take multiple shots, but as it was, this was a one-shot deal. I knew I'd only get one shot before she noticed me, and after that first one, that the question would moot. The naturalism of the moment would be lost. Unfortunately, my shutter speed ended up being too slow, as I usually shoot in aperture priority, and I believe I remember that I had just been shooting at a closed-down (high number) aperture for deeper depth-of-field (the zone of clear focus), which made the camera choose a speed too slow to catch her walking even slowly down the stairs. *SIGH*

This picture was part of my ongoing series about constructions of femininity (talked about in-depth in previous posts) and women in Korea. For my faithful readers, you'll remember me talking a lot about how I unapologetically let my "heterosexual male gaze" guide my photographs. Well, I caught this young woman looking and licking lascivious (at least in my mind's eye), striking a Lolita pose with the ice cream cone. In any case, this photo has several problems for me, the first of which being that I don't think the apparent obviousness is apparent nor obvious to anyone but me. Also, as I had been using my backup point-and-shoot Olympus Stylus Epic (a highly-recommended, stealthy, and not-to-mention cheap backup or alternative camera). I didn't have time to turn on spot metering didn't want to use a flash, so the background fooled the meter a bit, resulting in a dark image in front. Also, she's out of focus, which is problem (although it isn't all the time). I did capture the moment I liked, however.

I wonder what you readers think of this, however. Think these shots were too quickly thrown in the edit bin, or perhaps are they as problematic as I thought? Sometimes my editing decisions are based on too technical decisions or, being the photographer, I am often a bit too hard on myself. I don't know – I leave this up to you and your posts.

Korea Herald Article: Migrant Workers

In an effort to get some of my former published work, I've included the text of the first photo essay that I did for the Korea Herald's Weekender section, which dealt with the issue of foreign workers in Korea. It wasn't as if the topic hadn't been covered in the Korean media before, but the angle that I took wasn't that of making a show of how bad foreign workers had it, or covering helpful "good" Koreans working with foriegn workers and symbolically absolving everyday Koreans of a kind of collective guilt; I wanted my take on the issue to simply reflect what I saw, which in the end was two people with hard jobs and difficult circumstances just trying to make their best out of the poor hand of cards they'd been dealt. In other words, I was just trying to portray these workers as human beings just trying their best to enjoy as humane life as possible. I didn't want to write them in as cardboard character objects of pity, and with the pictures, I wanted the readers to see for themselves to see and feel the environment these two were living in, in all of its gritty, yet humane reality.

In any case, here's the raw (therefore someone extended, yet also less carefully edited) version of the Korea Herald article.

--- ARTICLE BEGINS ---

Every Christmas and New Year’s Day – at least in the United States – the local media like to do feel-good stories on the homeless getting fed turkey at a city shelter, or poor kids getting presents from a corporate CEO dressed up as Santa Claus. These are the stories that warm the heart, and people want to see and read about such things, stories that fit the holiday mood. But those stories never ask the question “So what are you going to do the day after New Year’s?” because the cheeky response would sound something like, “Well, I’m going to continue to be homeless and I won’t be getting any free eggnog or turkey dinners.” It in the spirit of this response that this story finds itself being written, since by talking with the two Indonesian migrant workers who are the focus of this photo essay, the irrelavance of such questions aboiut what they were doing for the holidays became clear. It is summed up in Rohman’s reply that “One day is no different from any other – I work.”

Such attitude adjustments were necessary from the beginning moments og writing this story. After first beginning to pursue leads and contacts to find a good story, it was quickly pointed out that the Korean words for “foreign worker” were not the terminology of choice, but that what translates into Korean as “migrant worker” is preferable. And it also became quickly obvious, as these initial contacts turned almost instantly cold, that media people were regarded with some degree of suspicion.

This is not to say that I blame anyone for looking askance at media people, especially an American photographer materialized out of nowhere wanting to take more pictures of “foreign laborers.” Indeed, the tale of migrant workers’ abuse, exploitation, and general life of hard knocks has reached the level of veritable cliché in the Korean media, as television news documentaries focus on the tough life of yet another brown man living in a tent, accompanied by syrupy music and melodramatic narration, which enables the conscientious Korean viewer to go through the requisite hand-wringing and head shaking that is simply part of the ritual of keeping up with the “social problem” of the hour. It would also be little surprise to find out that the migrant workers and the people who work with them are simply fed up with the callous demeanor typical of Korean photographers, who typically step over the invisible line that separates documentary and fiction, for posing shots and restaging events is the norm, rather than the unethical behavior of the very few.

Still, after being introduced to Rohman and Sakroni, things quickly became as easy as pie, for the goal was not the quick creation of easy pics to accompany a short news article, but was rather planned as a significant work of photo documentary, something that requires the subtleties of connecting as human beings and the photographer having a sense of respect for the subjects. Actually, being able to work with these two particular young men from Indonesia was a stroke of luck. Rohman and Sakroni are fairly representative of the migrant workers living here in Korea, who are largely single, male, and here to make money to send back home. The relative power of the Korean won has easily more than ten times the purchasing power of money made back home.

Rohman, the trim and muscular man of the pair, sends home as much as a million out of the 1.2 to 1.3 million won he makes working 12-hour shifts in a microchip board assembly plant. He is also representative of the minority of workers here here illegally, although he initially came on a legal work visa more than five years ago, again, like most people who find themselves in this status. His labor power is still needed and he has no problem finding work – but the powers that be would rather have green, unseasoned labor that constantly rotates out, rather than people like Rohman, who speak Korean relatively fluently and have become somewhat familiar with the law. It is worth noting that the reason aspects of this story are somewhat vague – e.g. how initial contact was made, where this photo story was shot, or anything else dangerously specific – is that such information could lead to Rohman’s arrest and deportation. So the fact that he stayed in the doorway of the bathroom I sat in the fast food restaurant we stopped in between stops on my tour of his life is the norm – this is the constant fear that illegal workers have to cope with as a part of everyday life.

Despite the present challenges of being illegal, or the fact that he cannot travel around outside during the daytime hours without fear of being randomly arrested by the immigration police (which is one of the reasons he works the 10 PM – 8 AM shift), Rohman’s story is one of relative success here. Over all the time he has been here, he has always consistently sent most of his salary home, and has always been able to suppress desires to buy frivolous items that are suddenly within his grasp given the money he makes here. He has an older-model green screen cellphone, a hand-me-down stereo and TV set, and scarce any other significant material possessions visible in his small room, besides a Korean-Indonesian dictionary, a small pack of CD’s, and clothes. Rohman, with his thrift and determination, is well on his way to buying the farm back home near Jakarta that means economic stability for his family. So the value of every won spent here means more than ten times that amount not going home. Rohman spends his only excess time and money at a neighborhood gym trying to keep his body healthy and stress levels down, as the tension and wear from working an electric sander all night long would be too much for him, he says.

Sakroni, on the other hand, is typical in that he is in Korea quite legally, but is unusual because he is not presently working. Also unfortunately typical for migrant workers in Korea are job-related injuries that permanently injure or maim them. Sakroni is quite lucky to be receiving not only governmental compensation for what has amounted to over 20 million won in medical costs, but he is receiving daily treatment and rehabilitation at a local hospital, which he says is completely responsible for his having regained almost full movement and use of his left leg, i.e. for him being able to walk. He is presently awaiting a doctor’s recommendation as to whether he requires further rehab, which will determine whether he will receive an extension of his work visa after he returns to Indonesia for a visit this January. If it is decided that he requires more of this treatment that he can’t afford back home, his visa will be extended; if the decision comes out otherwise, with his injured status, it is doubtful that he will ever be allowed to return to Korea. But putting the particulars of Sakroni’s situation aside, it is easy to see that, like many migrant workers, even the smallest decision or random event – such as a heavy piece of equipment falling down and nearly destroying the knee of the unfortunate soul working under it – can decide the fate of not only an individual’s life, but that of the people who depend upon his work and good health.

Given the timing of this photo essay, one of the most pressing questions as we were wrapping things up was that concerning the health of relatives back home in Indonesia after the devastating tsunamis that are the top of the news these days. Neither Rohman nor Sakroni had any relatives or close friends near the epicenter of the disaster, as both of them lived in towns near the island housing Jakarta, far away and on the opposite coast from the destruction. In this respect, it is difficult to say how repesentative they are, since there are so many of their Indonesian brethren working here with them. In this respect, they simply call themselves lucky.

But the point of this photo essay, as you might be able to tell from the images contained within it, is not simply that of reproducing the sob story that is typical of the “poor foreign worker” discourse here in Korea. Nor is there any intention to play down the fact that these workers have got it tough, much tougher than most of the other foreigners here who are typically white, from developed countries, and somehow or another here because of being a native speaker of English. What this photo essay is intended to be is a simple document of the lives of two migrant workers, a work that portrays them in the full breadth of their humanity, and not as the hapless victims that bleeding-heart progressives tend to paint them as, nor as the social liabilities that unenlightened conservatives falsely represent them to be. Rohman and Sakroni, for better or worse, are just two guys trying to work through life by taking the best options available, something that is typical of not only “migrant workers,” but of all of us “foreigners” who came across long stretches of sea to live and work here.

Thanks to all my peoples...and goodbye, Seoul Selection

This week I formally part ways with the Seoul Selection newsletter and have decided to continue my photo column on my own. The main reason for this lies in the fact that my original idea was that of a real photo column, that being a singular photo accompanied by text explaining and enhancing the impact of the image. Also, I was of the mind that readers interested enough in my photo column enough to linger a bit would be interested in how the picture was taken, the particular meanings of aspects of the image, as well as generally what the picture meant to me as part of an overall view of Korea.

Creative differences as to how that could be accomodated in the newsletter, in combination with the fact that my photos have been less and less of a standalone quality and that I really wanted to provide text with some of the more controversial stuff I wanted to present, became such that it seemed better to go down separate paths.

So I just wanted to give a note of thanks to the Seoul Selection newsletter for its continued support over the last nearly two years.

I also wanted to send out a shout-out to the big bloggers who've been sending lots of traffic my way: The Marmot, Hunjang, and the Lost Nomad. These are the people who I happen to know are sending over sharp and savvy readers, so if any more of you are out there referring this site, please drop me a note when you get a chance.

Interracial Dating II...

OK, I figured it was time for an article-level post on this subject, since we seem to have kicked up a minor storm on this blog about it, but I don't see much progress being made here between the two sides of the fence. For people new to this debate, check out the post "On the Supposed Legitimate, "Political" Concerns over Interracial Dating" and associated follow-up posts.

First of all, I think our main protagonist, while his input is appreciated, is hung up on a few points that I'd like to clear up now.

On the subject of my alleged "attack" on Korean American men and my "one-sided view" – I think that interpretation is unfair. My post was grounded in my own experience of constantly hearing certain kinds of comments from people I even consider friends in the Korean American community around me. My point in posting was to say that it's not OK to continue to make assumptions and comments about people based on what is nothing more than a stack of assumptions rooted in the questionable identity politics about race. I would consider the same to be true for Black women constantly getting on Black men about dating white women just so "they can get of the other side" and castigating white women for wanting to "get some of that big, Black dick." Hey, some people are down with that program and those assumptions. But I bet you that many of these relationships are not, and what business is it of ours anyway to judge whom people date, whom they fuck, and whom they befriend? Yes, there are frustrating structural factors that surround and inform our individual personalities and choices, but you can't enforce the "personal is political" rule, Red Guard, thought-police style. It's just not anyone's place to do so. Even if we knew the individual(s) in question, it would still likely not be our place, would it?

As for comparing oppressions – that's a dangerous and useless path to start to tread, but for the sake of argument, let's explore this line of thinking for a moment. OK – Korean American men have it worst in the world, being stereotyped by every other racial group and stereotyped, discriminated against by your "own" women. Yeah, Black men in America have got it really good, since now rap is so popular and Will Smith is a major 4th of July draw every summer. No, there has been no media stereoptyping of Blacks at all in comparison to what Korean American men have experienced, and no one has ever been ridiculed for being Black. And I wish there were enough Black men to go around even to be stereotyped against by their "own" women, but since we all know that 1/4 young Black adultmales are/were in jail, Black women now complain about the fact that there aren't enough to go around. And yes, Korean American men have it so bad when they come to Korea, since they all start going out with the tall white men.

Can we all see how ridiculous this line of thinking is? Korean American men have it the worst in the world. Hey, let's get real. If someone is looking at things in a one-sided way, and painting a whole group's collective experience as a function of one single man's experience, it's Bluejives. I know a lot of Korean American men who would not agree with your view of things – I'm simply saying that you shouldn't use your own experience as representative of everyone in your group.

My original post was critical and laced with anger, but it was very much rooted in being sick of hearing things around me that a lot of Korean Americans do tend to say around me, and I was surprised at not only the fact that they were saying them, but that these things are so considered to be a legitimate kind of discourse that people even say these things aroung someone who they know good and well is the product of one of these "questionable" interracial relationships. It's not that I am so sensitive or stressing about it – I am way used to it – it's just that I'm speaking up against a way of thinking that's obviously rooted in racist assumptions and thinking.

In that post, did I imply that all Korean Americans think in this way, or somehow single out Korean Americans as particularly more racist than other groups? Was my post's point to prove that Korean Americans' ostensive treatment of me is worse than the treatment than "they" receive from white people? None of this was the post's intent at all, if you actually read it for what it said. I am, however, being critical of behavior in a community of which I am also a part. And I consider this behavior racist. I would hope and expect that when racist comments come up in conversation amongst white people, a white person might call people out on their shit.

Everyone has relative points of cultural power, although everyone does not share in relative points of structural power. Yes, African Americans possess some degree of pop culture capital in our society that perhaps Korean Americans do not similarly enjoy (which perhaps explains why members of the mostly Korean American but ostensibly Asian fraternity on campus often address each other with a "what's up, nigga?!" on campus, something that boggles my mind), but please stop whining about how badly Korean American men have it in a society in which they are a part of the dominant group. Maybe you can continue to dwell on how badly Asian American men have it in the United States, but don't even make me laugh – not in Korea.

Nigga, please.

A note about Korean law and photography...

Gumbi asked a frequently-asked-question about taking pictures in Korea and photography, which I'd like to address, since it took me awhile to figure out myself.

First, a word about street photography, privacy rights, and the American law.

In the States – and variations of this is true in most other countries – the photographer has a right to shoot in any public place, and no one actually has any "rights" as to what they are doing in such a public place. This includes the streets, most open places, and even some places you might not think are public, but are, such as university campuses. Here, we're talking about the right to take a picture – not yet about rights having to do with use. Also, taking pictures from any place that might reasonably be considered public is protected. This is where the paparazzi get their power – standing on the sidewalk and snapping a picture in the direction of someone's living room window with a non-zoom lens that is close to something approximating the magnification of human vision is fair game. Of course, if you're stalking someone and interfering with their life, something called a restraining order is going to come and get you. Not fair game is snapping pics standing outside someone's bedroom window, or using a 600mm lens to get shots of someone nude sunbathing. That's where lawsuits come into the picture. Pun intended.

There are specific places where photography is restricted because they are private spaces, such as most shopping malls and other places of commerce. Also restricted are hospitals and government facilities, as well as other kinds of sensitive areas. In these cases, the publishing of the image is caught up in how they were generated, so publishing images taken in a department store or nuclear reactor facility will get you sued in the former case, and arrested for violating security something or other in the latter. However, these protections are lifted when something become "news" – some event understood to be within the realm of the public's right to know. This is when private spaces become public ones, such as when the Frappe Makers' Union of America decide to go on strike in the local mall. Their demonstration becomes news, but sometimes this becomes tricky, since people paid by the hour might not be up on the latest Supreme Court decisions regarding photojournalists' rights.

As far as I have seen in cases in American law, no one has the right to take your film. Even you are arrested (which should never happen – you can't be arrested for taking pictures, only for interfering with police business) or removed from the premises, NO ONE has the right to relieve you of your film or equipment. If a police officer damages or takes your equipment, or the overzealous security guard does the same, you can press charges against that person. Of course, if the police officer is going to beat you down, you'll have to deal with that one later. But of a security guard in the local shopping mall doesn't know the law and takes your camera from you, call the police – it's theft. Police officers can also not prevent you from taking pictures – they can only cordon off areas and prevent you from entering. But sometimes, even these public servants don't know the law and overstep their bounds.

Now, there are exceptions regarding people's privacy and reputation. Of biggest concern is misrepresenting someone or what they're doing, which will simply get you in trouble in terms of libel (remember, "slander" is orally making false statements or defaming someone). But also, you might be accused of putting someone in "a bad light." Kinda vague, but if you defame someone with an image that ruins or hurts their reputation, you might be on the losing end of a suit. But remember, they also have to show damages, so showing someone eating a sandwich with sauce dribbling down their chin may be in bad taste as a photographer (kind of an unwritten photojournalism rule to not publish pictures of people eating), but what damages have they experienced for being show to be a messy eater? I doubt if anyone's lost a job or business because of that.

So as long as you keep it reasonable, you should be safe. And as long as you're not publishing your pictures for commercial purposes, and the pics were taken without having fallen under any special conditions, that person has nothing to say about the image, except that it not be used for selling Oreos or MP3 players. It can be used in a newspaper, exhibit, or photo book (except not on the cover, which is considered a commercial use).

Now, let's talk a bit about Korea.

Pretty much everything's the same except for one caveat: the concept of the "right to one's image." In Korean, this is called the 초상권, and it actually confuses a lot of people. This is a special right, in which people have the right to determine how their image is used, regardless of having been in a public place or doing something understood to be in the interest of the public's right to know (news). So people technically have the right to sue more easily, because they have the right to their image – period. Ah, but there's a rub.

Just like in the case of people suing in the States, the person still has to show damages in order to collect anything. So the value of suing anyone becomes pretty minimal. So I could be sued for using someone's image without permission, but as long as it's not for commercial purposes, or people's reputations haven't been damaged in any way that can be concretely demonstrated, people hardly ever sue strictly based on their image having been print or broadcast.

After reading through an overview of the major cases in a book on photojournalism in Korea, these major lawsuits that send chills down the spines of the media here all have to do with using people's images for commercial purposes. In terms of the lawsuit thing, people technically have a lot of rights to how their image is used, but generally don't really do anything about it, nor do they seem to care. Most reaction to having images taken generally seem to revolve around the false notion that someone is going to make major bucks off their image – so where's my check? A newspaper photographer told me to not even worry – if anyone calls about picture in a photo book, a couple hundred thousand won and a polite thank you would do the trick. And he assured me that this would hardly ever happen, in any case.

Now, regarding that "right to the image," Koreans have a pretty inaccurate view of their actual rights. The right to one's image has nothing to do with my right to take a picture. No one has the right to touch me, my equipment, nor seize my property. Of course, this is of little assurance when the riot police are beating you over the head, but this has never happened to me. On a side note, I find the riot police remarkably polite to foreign photographers. Well, I guess it's in their best interests to be.

As for the "real" police (I use that term guardedly here, since I respect "professional" police officers here about as much as I do the criminals they ostensibly are supposed to exist to capture – the one major run-in I had with them involved a fight in which basically, a group of American and Canadian girls in Itaewon were attacked by a Korean hooker and a prospective client. The girls were not on their best behavior after one of them was clocked on the back of the head by this random drunk guy, but then again, this hapless girl did get sucker-punched in the head for absolutely no reason. So when the girls came to the aid of their friend, they were understandably mad and throwing some prickly language about. Well, that's when the Korean woman got into it and attacked one of the girls, thereby pulling the whole group into a brief brawl that was actually stopped by a couple of the girls themselves. Well, when then police came, of course they were trying to take away the foreign girls only, without even questioning (!) the Korean woman. The American dude who started the whole thing had taken off long before. Anyway, the girls were understandably scared and angry, so they were yelling as they started getting manhandled and shoved into the car as the Korean woman looked to be getting fancy free. Well, I had decided to play my civic duty by very obviously snapping shots off with my big flash attached, to warn the police that they were being watched. I never did, nor have any intention of using the pictures of these girls having a bad moment in their lives. Nor would I let myself publish a picture of that sex worker, for obvious ethical reasons. But I would publish pictures of those officers behaving illegally and unprofessionally, since they are/were public servants engaged in "professional" misconduct. I'll decide whether or not to do that later. You just might see that picture soon.

But the real reason I took those pictures has to do with the fact that they not only were physically abusive to those women and my flashes surely kept them on their P's and Q's a bit more than if I had not been there. This was evidenced in the fact that one officer made a motion to hit me, as he told me to stop taking pictures. My hunch in my right to be taking pictures (as most relevant Korean criminal and civil law is a reproduction of American law, with some notable exceptions) was confirmed when I yelled, "Are you trying to stop me taking pictures? Is this against the law?" He said nothing and just looked frustrated and looked like he really wanted to hit me. He asked me if I wanted to be arrested for interfering with police business. I countered by asking him how I was "interfering" by taking pictures and why he was making illegal threats. He had nothing to say. I added that I was also a witness to the entire incident and were completely ignoring one of the main assailants in this whole fracas, so why wasn't she being taken in as well? At that point, the Korean woman was begrudgingly put in another police car to be questioned at the station. The "questioning" at the station was done while I was being made to wait outside the station, while I listened to the older officers shoot them single-syllable questions such as "You hit?!" and "Who hit?!" No translator was provided even as decisions were seeming to be made as to responsibility based on their oral arguments. The Korean woman was listened to at length as the foreign women were repeatedly told to be quiet and even "Shut up!" in English. Disgusting. I was allowed, after standing outside for around 2 hours with a foreign friend of theirs who had come out to help translate, and never allowed to offer an oral account of what I had seen. I was made to fill out only the formal written witness form, which was difficult to do in my excited yet tired state write in front of all the parties involved. In any case, this is just one of several run-ins with the "po-po" here in Korea, and lemme give you all a piece of advice – if you're assaulted in Korea, you better have frickin' videotape, eyewitnesses, and bloody murder scratched all over your body, since the Korean witnesses that night were pretty partial to "uri nara." And they certainly weren't eager to hear the testimony of a Korean-speaking brown man. Or a Korean-speaking white man, for that matter.

Anyway, in sum – I generally take pictures wherever I want, as long as I'm not putting people in danger or making them uncomfortable. And I'll take pictures to help keep people out of danger. The question of private vs. public spaces is answered if and when someone asks me to stop photographing, or if there's a sign expressly prohibiting photography. I generally abide by such rules. In general, thought, 95% of the time people don't even know I'm taking their picture, and I do not believe this practice to be unethical. Getting "model releases" for every picture taken is not only legally unnecessary, it is logistically impossible and obviously destroys any spontaneity, not to mention blowing your cover. And since the very act of stopping a person you don't know and asking them to sign a form signing away their rights to their image usually scares anyone into declining to sign, such a ridiculous practice would destroy the art of street photography itself.

So no more Doisneau's kissing couple in the square (even though that picture was posed, actually), or the poignant and important image of the fireman holding the dead baby after the Oklahoma City bombing, the haunting images of frightened New Yorkers looking up at the doomed Twin Towers, or just about any other iconic image in your mind that has defined history for you, or the mundane beauty of the everyday. Actually, the law has actually pretty much killed the art of street photography in France, where you need the expressed, written consent of everyone in an image to publish a picture. Ironic, Paris being one of the birthplaces of the art of shooting on the street and all.

As for the ethics of using people's images, I find myself far more ethical than the majority of Korean photographers I have seen, who as a rule pose and set up shots as fact after the fact. I feel it is possible to say with authority that ethics and the media are distant acquaintances in Korea, where print journalists routinely re-pose reality and often don't even attend the very events they are ostensibly covering. Yes, we hear about such journalistic scandals in the US, but yes, they are scandals because such behavior is considered beneath contempt in the journalistic community. If and when people do flub and Photoshop, they are playing with professional fire. Consider the case of one photographer who simply cloned together bodies in the background to fit them into the frame. He was just saving space, but when suspicious photo editors looked into and reported the case, he was blackballed for life. His name is mud and he'll never work again as a photojournalist. Here, such behavior is standard procedure. If you don't believe me, go watch any major protest and watch the post-protest posing begin. It's appalling.

So I publish images that I think are of use as social criticism and am extremely careful about the quality of reproduction of people's faces in the image. As for other images, I think nothing puts anyone in a "bad light" in the American definition, so even a technical violation of people's "right to their image" would have to go pretty far to prove damages. Images of people walking down the street, selling fishcakes, or watching a soccer match are not casting people in a way that would harm their reputations. As for my critical look at the construction of femininity in Korea and letting my male gaze guide my lens, my ethical line is defined by photographing people simply as they mean to present themselves. So snapping a woman walking down the street in a short skirt may cause you to question my motivations for taking the picture, but I consider anyone in a public space fair game. But a picture that violates a person's intent to present themselves, such as Japanese-style "upskirt" shots, are clearly unethical. So yes, if I were sitting across from a woman in a short skirt and her panties were showing, I would consider that stepping over the line, since that was not an intentional act that anyone would reasonably think appropriate.

Of course, there are no hard and set rules, and you readers will likely think of many mindbendingly complex potential situations and examples. But before you get to trying to trip me up, just think of the photos I publish, which are a tiny fraction of the pictures I have taken. I have 800+ rolls of film, many of which have images I'l love to use but won't allow myself to. I always shoot first and second-guess myself later. Sometimes I do find myself passing a picture over for all kinds of particular reasons, and I am always questioning the ethics of publishing images.

But I almost never second-guess myself when I shoot. And yes, I often feel uncomfortable when I do shoot, but I push myself to make the image and deal with the consequences later. To my constant surprise, I am almost never actually disturbing people's space or perceived sense of privacy. So I just keep on shooting. If you second-guess yourself into a tizzy about when to push the shutter and when not to in the situation, you'll just end up a nervous nellie with lame, almost-had-it shots.

As my friend Ann puts it when describing anything worth doing in life, it's "balls-to-the-walls!" or nothing. Of course, you gotta define some ethical "walls" for yourself, but you need to have "balls," too. Well, figuratively, of course.

For those of you who were asking for more practical purposes related to your own photography, I just say SHOOT FIRST. Fret about it after you have the shots in front of you. I'd rather take a shot and not use or need it than want it later and regret not having shot it. Man, that would just keep me up at night.

Thanks to my readers...

Since I've started blogging again, I've gotten some great responses from what I have come to see are some faithful readers.

I just wanted to put in an entry thanking people for coming back to the blog after my long hiatus. I think I got off to a great start with the recommendations of several well-known figures in the Korean blogosphere, as well as the link in from Seoul Selection. Then, around December, I flubbed it. Dropped the ball. Blew a great thing. Not posting for 6 months. Stoopid, stoopid.

My only excuse has nothing to do with not having anything to say, but rather just being plain distracted and lazy, which was further enabled by not liking to compose or deal with posts via Typepad's web interface, which requires that you write in HTML tags just to italicize words and manually put in the tags for making links and other irritating HTML minutiae. Now, with the help of a great program, I can just write as I would in any word processor and publish with the push of a button, without having to log in via the web and go through several windows of annoying crap. This is not to dis Typepad, but rather to give it kudos for making itself so easily compatible with offline blogging programs.

On a non-technical note, the thanks I am giving to the readers includes those who go through the trouble to debate with me, as I appreciate the extra mental and physical effort required to formulate and type out an opinion. Even if I disagree with you, I truly appreciate you taking the energy to do so, as long as it's civil. In the spirit of open and healthy debate, I promise never to delete a post unless it's downright inappropriate in its use of foul language or unnecessaryily vicious invective. To date, I've not had to erase any posts, albeit a couple have been a little angry. I feel as if it's people's right to express their opinions and have them displayed, if I'm going to talk about points that are controversial or hit close to other people's hearts. I wouldn't be a true "metropolitician" if I deleted every post that disagreed with me or even successfully called me out and made me look stoopid, which anyone can sometimes can be.

So to my readers, I raise a metaphorical 500cc glass of 생맥주 (draught beer) to you in appreciation and respect for you coming back to my scribblings.

Salut!

"The Decisive Moment"

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a photographic genius, a giant of street photography without even trying, and later in life, someone who did not even recognize himself for his previous photographic greatness, as his many fans and followers did. He actually quit photography, avoided interviews and his picture being taken, and took up drawing and sketching.

For those of you who know who he was, this little bio is already quite familiar. For those of you who don't know the man, you might have seen his photos, or at least perhaps some taken by the countless photographers who came after him, influenced by his singular style. Carter-Bresson is also famous for coining the phrase and concept of "the decisive moment" – the instant at which all elements within the frame come together, composition is just right, and the shutter gets pushed to capture that irreproducible instant on film forever. I burn through rolls and rolls of film before capturing that decisive instant in which every part of the scene that caused you to lift the camera to the ready in the first place come together, then in less than an eyeblink, break their fleeting formation and disparately part from each other forever.

Such is the nature of "street photography," I discovered the canon of street photography late in the game, well after discovering the wonders of photography in 7th grade. Without a subject, and living in Ohio, there wasn't much to snap. There's a reason why all the major "schools" of street photography are really just world-class cities that simply are full of hustle and bustle, action and reaction. New York City, Paris, Chicago, Tokyo. I would add Seoul to that list. Seoul is indeed so "dynamic" (I hate using Korean government tourist board catchprases) that getting decent pictures on the street here is not so difficult. Even a novice with a consumer digital camera and the will to use it will get something interesting if they are patient and know where to look.

A devoted and determined street photographer will get some startling images. In order to capture these moments, though, what I quickly learned is that you have to know people, the environment, and how the two interact. It also helps to know the language and understand the "culture" – which is another way of saying that you should know the patterns of thought, motion, and movement. To me, knowing how to name the parts of the hanbok means nothing – that's doesn't reflect a knowledge of the people around you. Real knowledge of the people and surroundings allows you to predict pictures and stick around past a woman's fighting off her man's attempts to get her into a love motel, who thereafter storms off in a huff, hails a taxi, proceeds to sit in said taxi for two or three minutes, then return to the her waiting man with her arms crossed, whereupon they both entered, presumably to party all night, until the "morning calm" – or at least for a few hours, whichever comes first.

It allows you to see, from a woman's arm going into her purse, from her increasingly halting gait, as well as from the kind of clothes she wears, that she is going to pull out her compact to check herself right in the middle of the street. Or that ajussi in front of you is going to hawk a chunky one right there on the sidewalk. The list of examples is endless, as is the number of times I've been wrong, and have internally proven my assumptions and stereotypes about the people I see completely wrong. My timing has also been off, and I have usually miss more moments than I have successfully capture. Most of my pictures are complete failures, and a look at any of my rolls shows slight variations on the same subject, most of which go right into my mental "reject" pile.

But perseverance defines the nature of the true street photographer. Out of a roll of 36 frames of film, one image in which the elements come together into something approximating a "decisive moment" sends a chill down the spine of a true blue street shooter – sitting hunched over long strips of film, squinting through a loupe when you realize that you got that kick-ass shot you hoped for – such are the moments worth living for. If you don't get that feeling – or the digital equivalent – you just ain't street. If you don't live for those shots, it's not in your blood.

The photographer who defines "street" for me is undoubtedly Garry Winogrand. In my eyes, he is the kingpin-mack-daddy-grandmaster-pimp of street photography; what's more, his photographic eye is the same as mine. Or, maybe I should more respectfully say – my eye resembles his. I consider myself lucky, though, to have been blissfully ignorant to the legacy of the great street photographers whose strong styles would certainly have influenced mine had I been a good little visual arts or photography major. When I came back to Korea in 2002, after having spent a couple years in the Korean sticks from 1994-1996, I was ready and rarin' to shoot. Luckily, as a Berkeley grad student, I had registration access to the School of Journalism, where I was able to slip into a 15-person-only documentary photo class taught by accomplished documentary photographer Ken Light. The class was actually set up as a series of guest lecturers, which included people such as Susan Meiselas, Sebastio Selgado, and other people I certainly didn't deserve to meet, not in my state of extreme ignorance of photo history. Imagine a beginning cyclist getting face time with Lance Armstrong, a 7th-grade beginner on the violin getting a master class with Itzhak Perlman, or a freshman film student getting to co-direct with Quentin Tarantino. That was basically me.

I didn't deserve three weeks of Susan Meiselas's input into my photo project, Ken Light's ongoing input and support, meeting the photo editor from the Sacramento Bee, or even the company of my fellow students in the class, all of whom were working journalists and photographers. But I did benefit – not in terms of skills, as the class wasn't about technical matters, and you had to already have had a portfolio of stuff to get into the class – but it was about fixing one's approach as a photographer and documenter of other people's lived realities. Developing my own style and a certain kind of sensitivity were the crucial things I gained from the experience, which really prepared me to hit the ground running when I arrived in Korea.

Combined with my previous, extensive experience here, I knew what I wanted to shoot; my mind was full of the many instants I now wished I had captured when I had been a babe-in-the-woods nearly a decade previous. But thankfully, I lacked exposure to the giants of street photography, a genre that still exists waaaay under the radar of even the most interested photo and art enthusiasts and advanced amateurs. It was actually quite easy to not know about Garry Winogrand until I had myself developed enough as a photographer to start hungering to find other photographers with whom I now knew I shared a photographic style.

So when I came across Winogrand in an amazing book entitled – appropriately enough – Bystander : A History of Street Photography, and came across just a few of Winogrand's shots, I got that tingle. But the weird and amazing thing was that they weren't my pictures – they were his. Still, I felt like I had taken them. That's when I knew I had found my mentor, albeit posthumously and well after the fact of my nascent development as a street photographer.

But I wouldn't have it any other way, as I was lucky to be able to appreciate and connect with Winogrand across the long stretches of time as well as my previous complete ignorance of his existence. As I mentioned above, my comfort with having someone who shared my passion for the street, lust for capturing the mundaneness of the everyday, and even a persistent and unabashed obsession with women as focused through a voracious male "gaze" – all had been Winogrand's first. I was floored. By the time I had perused most of his most famous images online, and after having finally bought a new collection of his work over Amazon, my journey as a photographer, to reveal the cheesy Star Wars melodramatic mode I unfortunately operate in, was now complete.

No longer did I have to feel guilty about my photographic impulses; I now believed what I had always suspected: that I shouldn't second-guess the purity of the impulse to shoot. That instinct is so strong and direct, not much else in life approaches that level of pure will and a feeling of possessing absolute purpose. To allow the standard socialized fear of breaking propriety, appearing "strange" in the eyes of others, receiving dirty looks, or even the fear of being physically challenged to mitigate and destroy this feeling was something I knew I should not do. Winogrand had, without his having ever known or imagined it, influenced me as much as any significant mentor in my life.

And people react to him in the same way as people react to me – they either see what he's trying to do with his camera, or they label him a hack, pervert, technically incompetent, or all of the above. Who knows? Maybe my motivations are base, "problematic," or even – *SHUDDER – inappropriate. But I think that this results in good pictures, after the several rounds of editing that take place when looking at the negatives, choosing frames to scan, and then obsessing over which are really good enough to put out there in the public eye. I think the pictures I choose are more than just the sum of the base elements of my peculiar pathologies.

Or maybe I'm AM just a pervert. I think the subway shot below says something, although what is being said is open to interpretation. Some people think I'm just trying to get upskirt shots. Well, I can only say that I think this is a bit different from the hidden camera snaps that some Japanese men like to take of women in the subways. Of course, there may be some overlap between me and them, but somehow I think I keep my decisions to present a photograph well above the belt.

Or take a look at Winogrand's famous shot from his series in the Bronx Zoo. The signs and and mental markers are inescapably racist. I personally do not know if Winogrand was a racist or not, although I did not see that reflected in the rest of his work. There are shots that make note of the obvious differences between the races, but those could easily be understood to have been taken in a critical capacity. Does the fact that racist codes are blaring out of the image make Winogrand a racist? He surely tapped into an gut, unadulterated response when taking this picture; I doubt that he had time to feel guilty about the "motivations" for taking the picture as a white man in the turbulent and contentious Sixties, especially of what is ostensibly and interracial couple. Had I been in the same position at the same time, would I have felt guilty about my motivations for taking this picture? Maybe. Would I have taken it? Hells, yeah.

As for the picture of the running couple below, which appeared in the pages of the Seoul Selection newsletter as well, this represents the kind of "decisive moment" that Cartier-Bresson talked about, but was taken in the particularly Winograndish mode in which I always shoot. But even within this style, my own characteristics are readily apparent. One major difference between me and Winogrand, for example, is the fact that I usually shoot without looking through the viewfinder. I am sure this would make Winogrand roll over in his grave, as would Cartier-Bresson, for they both stressed exact control over composition. I've read that Winogrand's style was one of always looking through the lens, even if meant bringing up the camera to his eye in a quick flash and shooting, then bringing the camera down again.

But my kind of shooting brings about particular problems. Cartier-Bresson is reported to have shot with a "normal lens" of around 50mm, which for me is a zoom lens. In order to get two people in a frame, you have to stand back quite a bit. Since I like to get right up next to and amongst my subjects, a 50mm would yield me a lot of head shots and body parts. So my longest lens is a 28mm, and my "normal" is a 24mm. 20mm is getting a little wide for me, but I do use it sometimes. The problem in the street is that since I am such tight quarters with people, most of the time, I'd compromise myself and the moment by bringing the camera up to my face. And since I have relatively ample room for error with a 24mm frame, even at close range, I would rather compromise a bit with composition and if necessary crop a bit later (although I try not to change the aspect ratio, or the dimensions of a 35mm film frame). In fact, I tend to prefer the added element of surprise and chance in my shooting.

In the case of the picture below, however, I can't actually remember for certain, but I am pretty sure I composed as I looked through the viewfinder. This couple had been too caught up in their own interaction to notice me, as he had just completed playfully "stealing" the ice cream cone he had just bought her, and was making a show of walking off and eating her prize, as she looks on in surprised amusement. In retrospect, I don't think there would have been a need for me to shoot from the hip.

I do sometimes regret the compromise of composition for capturing the moment, but I stand by the choice. The picture below demonstrates exactly what I am talking about, since composition is clearly compromised. The two young couples are captured in the frame doing very distinct and different things, and there is a sort of interaction going on between both pairs of people – one active and oblivious of being shot, the other being relaxed and totally nonchalant even as they see me shooting them – but the head of the man to the far left is guillotined by my composition. Argh! The perfect picture would have been possible had the camera been up a little higher – compromising a few inches of her thigh just below the skirtline and everything on that level of the frame would have constituted a painless cropping choice for the benefit of getting the tall man's expression in reaction to his female companion. Her pose is perfect, as she's caught right in the middle of the interaction, her arms perfectly placed – one wrapped around his, the other in a relaxed position of repose – and she's in a relaxed mid-stride that contrasts with his apparent non-chalant or even standoffish stance. To this day, I'll never know what his expression is, and even writing about this is killing me.

As for the couple that is the main element of the shot, their "whatever" and "don't-give-a-fuck" non-chalance is eminently cool and the fact that they're both catching me in the act is priceless. It defines an intimate moment in which the viewer is made to pay a price for the pleasure of their visual spectatorship. The girl has the appearance on being young, sassy, and sexy – perfectly matched with a cool-as-beans boyfriend who has casually thrown an arm around her, as she casually hooks her fingertips upon his.

The two stances and interactions are so great and strike such an interesting contrast to each other that thinking about the cut-off head is downright painful. But on the other hand, had I put the camera to my eye, I am nearly certain that the girl would have instantly moved to cover her face, move out of frame, or otherwise self-consciously try and prevent herself from appearing in a picture. The boy may have been more non-plussed about a random camera snapping his shot, but even that isn't certain. In any case, I am sure I would have lost that priceless look of theirs in the time it took me to make the swift motion of bringing the camera up. And making sudden movements with large black objects in close range to complete strangers is not something that you would want to do. Again, in the Korean context, on the Korean street, my techniques are born out.