The Seoul Essays III: Pleasures of the Everyday

THE PLEASURE OF THE HUNT
One could liken street photography to hunting, with heads on the walls and stuffed animals as the morbid trophies that are the pictures we street shooters take. This is what street photography is about, the raw pleasure it provides – because the moments I want to capture can never be duplicated or faked, and once they have passed, they are gone. There is only one chance to capture them, one chance to preserve the moment forever. This is what drives me to push the shutter button.

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. In the twilight of his life, he actually quit photography, avoided interviews and his picture being taken, and returned to 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 an irreproducible instant on film forever. I burn through rolls and rolls of film before capturing that decisive instant in which every part of the frame comes;;;];]]] together; then in less than an eyeblink, these elements break their fleeting formation, a singular instant of perfection, to then break apart from each other forever.

<DESCRIPTION OF THE PICTURE ELEMENTS>

Such is the nature of "street photography," which I discovered late in the game, well after discovering the wonders of photography in the 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 grew up in world-class cities full of hustle and bustle, action and reaction: New York City, Paris, Chicago, Tokyo, and Seoul. Seoul is indeed so "dynamic" (to use one of the Korean government's tired 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, however. 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 enter the hotel, presumably to wait until the "morning calm" comes – 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 makeup kit to fix herself right in the middle of the street. 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 captured. 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, a single image in which the elements come together into to define a "decisive moment" sends a chill down the spine of a true blue street shooter – who often sits hunched over long strips of film, squinting through a loupe when he realizes that he got that perfect shot he had hoped for – such are the moments worth living for. If you don't get that feeling, you just aren't made to shoot in the 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. But thankfully, I did not even know of his existence until well after I became a street photographer myself, and developed my own particular style. I consider myself lucky to have been blissfully ignorant to the legacy of the great street photographers whose strong styles would certainly have influenced mine had I known about them as perhaps a visual arts or photography major. In a way, I started discovering street photographer quite late, which allowed me to develop without thinking, "Am I copying a Winogrand shot?" or "How can I take this in a non-Winogrand way?" I am so happy that I didn't have to worry about such things.

When I came back to Korea in 2002, after having spent a couple  years in the Korean boondocks 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. In other words, it was helpful to develop my own style first, before thinking about the other styles I would have to compare it to.

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. I felt like the pictures were mine. But the weird and amazing thing was that they weren't – 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.com, 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 assert that I am thinking about something completely different from the hidden camera snaps that some men would like to take under women's skirts in subways. One can choose to either believe me or not; but I know why I take the pictures – the only thing I can do is explain that to people. Of course, there may be some overlap between me and them, but I know that most of my decisions to present a photograph are well above the belt, even if, as a man, I might happen to possess other side motivations.

Just 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? Without a moment's hesitation.

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 still, even seen within this style, my own characteristics are readily apparent. One major difference between me and Winogrand, for example, is the fact that I often 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 only 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 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, since they were completely ignoring me.

When I do 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 although composition is clearly compromised, the moment was nearly lost; I maintained only a fragile spontaneity in the shot, which would have been completely lost by raising the camera to my eye. 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 it pains me every time I look at this image.

As for the couple that is the main element of the shot, their "whatever" and "just-don't-care" 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 instinctively 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 have self-consciously tried to 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 is always a good idea to do. Again, in the Korean context, on the Korean street, my techniques are borne out.

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TAKING PICTURES AND THE LAW
This brings us to the inevitable question, the most commonly asked of me, which is, how can you take pictures of people you don't know? Especially in Korea, people seemed quite concerned with the law, photography, and the "right to one's image" – the ever-present 초상권. But before we start down that road, I think it more interesting to start where I did – from the point-of-view of an American photographer. So, first, we'll begin with a word or two 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, the photographer has the right to 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 in that it's "selling" the book).

But what about the Korean case?

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, considering the sensitive nature of their job, 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.

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. Indeed, that would just keep me from sleeping at night.
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TROPHY SHOTS
Here are some of my favorite street shots, some of which capture a "decisive moment," and some of which capture simply a familiar slice of the everyday in a slightly different way.

"Ajummas at Rest"

"Rice Cake Girls"

"Sticker Frenzy"

"Stolen Glance"

(Click on this picture to enlarge it)

"Unknown Soldier"

"Made to Wait"

"Intimate Strangers"

"In Transit"

"Strutting"

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SEOUL IS FOR LOVERS

"Ah, Seoul."

Well, it certainly doesn't have the romantic reputation of France – "Ah, Paris" –  in the springtime, but Seoul is definitely the city for lovers. Everywhere you go, couples abound, and in certain places, touchy-feely pairs are the majority – Shinchon on the weekends springs instantly to mind when thinking of a sea of couples desperately clutching one another while walking around in complete oblivion to everyone else around. On a Sunday afternoon near the new Artreon movie complex, it is difficult to go about one's business alone without being acutely reminded of the fact that one is not part of a heteronormative social coupling.

Now, before I am accused of being purposely incomprehensible in my writing, let me explain what "heteronormativity" means, since it's not exactly a word one hears over the dinner table. Any society has certain groupings that define the majority, both in terms of numbers as well as social power. Sometimes this is not the case, as in apartheid South Africa, in which whites were the numeric minority but were the majority in terms of power. But in most cases, both definitions of majority overlap, or at least run about 50/50. So in the case of most modern industrialized countries, including South Korea, we usually have a majority ethnic group, a society controlled via its most important institutions by the male gender, as well as the ongoing efforts of a monied class to maintain control of its vested interests.

Break this down in America and the profile looks like white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant males who attended school such as Phillips Andover Academy and Yale University for three generations. [Ahem, George Bush.] Look at places like Korea and you get people with yangban (the gentry class] roots in Seoul, attended Kyeonggi High School, then Seoul National University, then the same for law school, and rode off their academic and family backgrounds into the main corridors of power. [Ahem, Lee Hoi Chang.] The fact that the present president, Noh Moo Hyeon, is a welcome departure from this pattern is besides the point of this pompous little piece. But here's the main point – there is also a majority in power in terms of sending and transmitting the signs of a heterosexual norm.

For those of you who might not take too much stock in this form of dominance by a majority, let me just suggest that the hegemony of heterosexuality is so complete that even pointing this out smacks of ridiculousness. And since the nature of belonging to this group is more performed than apparent, one might think that this doesn't even count as a conceptual category. But if you want to test it, just perform this little sociological experiment: take two males and have them caress and neck in the middle of a shopping mall in any midwestern city – note any adverse reactions. Or, alternatively, do the same in the middle of a shopping mall in the middle of the main fairway in the Coex shopping mall. Repeat frenzied notetaking.

In any case, what I find interesting in Korea is not the fact of heteronormativity, since this norm and associate behaviors exist everywhere, but rather two particular aspects of it that are particular to Korea:

#1 Its degree.
People always seem to ask each other, quite early in initial social conversations, "Do you have a boy/girlfriend?" as a part of those key questions that people tend to ask each other in Korea in order to know how to talk and deal with one another. Given the hierarchical nature of the language, as well as the class and status-oriented thinking of many people, the fact that one's age, hometown, and where you went to school are first out of the gate is not surprising. But included in the litany of questions asked in order to help guide one's social positioning is that of determining whether or not one is single or not. Older people tend to be obssessively concerned with when single people are going to stop being single, while younger people seem to be curious as to a) whether you should be treated as an oppa or an option (or both) in the case of men, for instance, or b) whether you seem to have be conforming to the social norm of having a significant other and why or why not.  Perhaps I'm overintellectualizing, but it's something worth thinking about, perhaps by someone of stronger anthropological acument; but I strongly believe there's something to these observations about the degree of heteronormativity here – watching the throngs of couples wildly clutching each other in seeming herds makes thinking about the subject inevitable.

#2 The relatively recent nature of its public brazenness.
What is also most interesting about this recent surge in expression of heteronormativity, a.k.a "public displays of affection" (PDA), is the fact that it is so intense in a society that only ten years ago (my favorite, single frame of reference) eschewed young people even holding hands in very public places, let alone each other, or even sensitive parts of each others' bodies. Ten years ago, uniformed middle and high school students holding hands was enough to cause a social ruckus, and was tempting a public scolding by someone older; nowadays, it's easy to see such students walking about arm-in-arm or hugging one another, completely absorbed in themselves and the moment. That's not something I necessarily disapprove of, nor is this at all the point of me writing this. What is most interesting is the way people seemed to view PDA as an "American" thing, something you would see in Hollywood movies. Ten years ago, people would always ask me whether people in America really kiss in the street like in the movies, or whether they really all sleep together on the first date. To the people who sometimes still insist that "Koreans do no do such things," I like to point out that I think young folks in Seoul are just as, if not more than, touchy and grabby in public. Sometimes I like to push the line that people here are more prone to PDA than back in the States, but no one seems to believe me, and I always get the "you're absolutely crazy" look. So I tend to keep that to myself. I also tend to keep to myself stories I hear from friends more frank and fun than me, ones having to do with people meeting on sogaetings (blind dates), deciding that neither one is really interested in the other, but that they're hot enough for one good roll in the hay – and off they go to a love hotel. But if I brought that up, I just might find myself committed to an asylum, so I just keep mum about what I see and hear going on amongst Korean folks who are not the professed paragons of virtue I tend to meet in the educational/academic circles I run in.

For those of you who are asking, I guess I'd say that I find these expressions of affection and love refreshing in what is a publicly conservative culture (although in describing the Korea that exists behind closed doors, I'd never come within 9 feet of the C-word). That's as far as I'll go in offering my personal opinion on the matter. In the end, that's not the important thing. I just find the extreme heteronormativity of Seoul fascinating, and it's something I tend to think about in terms of many recent changes in public culture, a large part of which is influenced by the fact that participation in public life primarily takes place as a part of consumption. When we get to the subject of dating, it is an activity that takes places almost solely as a consumptive act. Importantly, dating is a very outside activity, in a country in which having your boyfriend or girlfriend enter the private space of one's home is difficult to do, given the fact that most people can't afford to, nor is it often socio-logistically possible to move out and live alone before marriage without a darn good excuse to do so.

But people find ways to take care of the necessary business created by the universal feelings of sexual and romantic attraction, and surely this must have always been the case, even in a much more publically conservative Korea of past decades. I mean, hell – even in the movie Scandal, people acknowledged that folks were getting it on even in Joseon dynasty days, so why not the 1960's? And in the year 2005? Yes, there are still some people who try to deny that Koreans do anything risque that others do "in foreign countries" (외국에서), which is by definition what Koreans do not do.

In any case, this is all a roundabout and long-winded way of getting to talking about the picture below. What surprises me is that certain people insist that "Koreans would never do anything like that in public" and the fact that the girl is wearing brightly colored socks must mean that she's actually a Japanese tourist. In the face of the most obvious evidence that they are not Japanese tourists – I've rarely seen Japanese tourists so comfortable in public, taking the subway, and bereft of large amounts of luggage or shopping bags – and without any real convincing evidence that they are, certain people insist that this couple "could not be Korean."

The first reason given is that Koreans, allegedly, don't wear such wild and colorful socks. Well, anyone who has been on the lower half of the peninsula in the fall and winter for the last two years must either be blind or completely oblivious to what youth are (or aren't!) wearing today. Behind my building in Myeongdong is a cart that only sells crazy colored stockings and knee socks, and they seem to clean up pretty well.

Next, doubters move to my foreignness as a weakness in my argument. Well, "foreigners can't tell the difference between Koreans and other Asians," I was once chided in response to this picture. Well, I answered, "I heard them speaking in Korean," something I specifically listened for when I was taking these shots, since I had thought in advance that people would doubt the Koreanness of the subjects. Every time something out of the perceived norm gets recorded in a photograph, many Korean people tend to think that surely I must have confused the person in the picture with some other Asians. But this against the fact that behaviors such as those depicted in the picture below are not actually outside of what I have seen to be the norm in Korea, no matter how many Korean people try to convince me otherwise.

I think this is because of the fact that people in their own countries are actually really poor observers; they tend to follow the same path to and from work, school, and even the places they go to socialize. Natives in one's own culture also tend to have clear, pre-conceived notions about who they are, what their people do, and what is and is not social reality. An outsider, who has the advantage of not being trapped by years of social training, formal education, and media exposue, can often see things quite differently. To me, there is absolutely nothing unusual about the scene below.

I mean, I have, with mine own eyes, seen Korean couples caressing each others' faces in public, sitting in each others' laps, rubbing thighs, pecking on cheeks, and yes, even tongue kissing. I've seen couples steaming up the windows in the back of buses, rubbing each other down in movie theaters, even making funny faces at each other in totally public places. Now, the more extreme cases are not the norm, but I have seen that sometimes Korean couples do things that I would find it hard to imagine American couples doing: a woman popping her man's pimple, pulling out the white hairs from the side of his head, scratching each other's backs under their clothes, picking noses, giving massages, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

Now, I'm not putting such behavior down – I'm just saying that love seems to go a long way here and will be inevitably expressed a little bit differently from culture to culture – so if you feel comfortable popping your man's pimples in public, good for you; but surely you have crossed that magical line before which many Americans probably might think it OK to give a quick kiss on the cheek. Frankly, as an American, I think I'd rather see the kiss on the cheek. Perhaps Korean folks should be more aware of the fact that although standards of PDA differ from country to country, Koreans might arguably be more affectionate in public than many Americans consider Europeans to be.

In the spirit of fun, let me present a couple that was so self-absorbed in each other that they never noticed me snapping nearly a whole roll of 35mm film of them with a large, black, manual focus camera with one of the loudest motor drives ever produced by Mankind. The money shots on this roll were technical failures due to camera shake, but captured the act itself.

Here, we see a couple engrossed with themselves.

Before we go on in this montage, this would be the appropriate time to cue up an appropriately sappy love song, or the old standby "It's a Wonderful World." Imagine this in your head as I present some pics of various Korean couples being very "un-Korean." Remember – in my mind, this is far from unusual because I see this stuff every day.

A tender moment before a loved one returns to the army.

A couple I came across outside the subway stop in the way home. They were so effused with affection that I asked them if I could snap them. They happily obliged.

A couple passes the time between subway trains.

An older man who had all but forced me to have a beer (on me) with him looks on wistfully at one of those "new generation" (신세대) couples, which is about what I could conjecture from his slurred speech. He did seem quite envious of them; perhaps that was because he truly did come from a far more conservative public culture.

A couple is acting very non-Korean in Itaewon. Koreans who have never traveled to Itaewon often overlook the fact that Itaewon has always been a play spot for young and wild Korean folks, especially when curfews were still technically the law until the late 1990's. When many places closed down at midnight, a lot of Koreans went into the places that illegally remained open, but many young Koreans also migrated to Itaewon around that time, where the curfew was far less strictly enforced. Many more adventurous young Koreans still see Itaewon as a particulatly interesting and somewhat more open space, which may perhaps explain this Korean couple's (yes, I heard them speaking native Korean to one another) brazen behavior while two foreigners looked on.

One thing I don't have on film is the Halloween party I attended last year, where no cameras were allowed, because an informal strip show was planned, in which only Koreans participated. Many foreigners were in attendance, but just looked amused and somewhat puzzled at the Koreans cheering on several Korean men and a few girls who had stripped down to their underwear, and one who stripped to her panties and was dancing on the bar. Yes, it was a Hongdae club, and Hongdae is notorious for that media-produced "scandal" in which some Korean girls had had their pictures taken in wet T-shirts with white men. Still, the wildest behavior I've seen in Korea was not undertaken by foreigners; I have seen that, even in extreme cases, Koreans can be as "wild" as any of the foriegners are imagined to be.

A man outside a Myeongdong movie theater seems to be consoling his female friend, who seemed awfully eager to be consoled. They walked off together quite happily.

More subway antics – a young couple passes the time by making faces at one another. Do we still need to explain this away as the actions of Japanese or Chinese tourists?

Grooming on-the-go.

More Japanese tourists posing as Koreans in a Hongdae dance club. And the man's Korean was so good, he could almost pass for Korean. But he didn't fool me. [This sentence is meant to be sarcastic when translated.] What I find interesting is that while Koreans tend to think Hongdae to be a place for foriegners to get wild, did anyone stop to think that perhaps because Hongdae already has an open and unique culture created by young Koreans, this might be why certain foreigners are attracted to this place?

Below, a couple fawns over and feeds each other.

One of many student couples I see. When I first came to Korea 11 years ago, it was hard to imagine such a sight; nowadays, I see students hiding and hugging in corners, holding hands and each other in public, and otherwise acting like adults in many cases. These students look like they are in middle school.

Two high school students expressing their closeness in the Coex mall.

A young lady playfully bites the arm of her boyfriend, who looks as though he came to visit her for lunch, ction outside of a KTF store near Ansan. They were quite the animated couple, seemingly oblivious to the people around them, including me.

Now, for the final picture, which is one of my favorites, here are some REAL Japanese students and I am the only tourist in sight. When I was sleeping over on an overnight stop in Narita, I took a trip to the local department store to see if I might be able to gain any pictures. I asked, in halting Japanese, "Shashin," as I pointed to my camera, "daizhobu?" They did not speak Korean, so don't get the funny idea that they were actually Korean student-tourists posing as Japanese kids. After a beat, they awkwardly obliged, withi the girl suddenly throwing up her hand to her mouth in an instant of coy affectation. The boy stands by, looking eminently cool with his loosened tie and playa stance. On my first trip to Japan, I got the most Japanesy picture I could have ever wanted. In addition, this picture is a good one with which to end this section, with the feeling that the specter of the "Japanese tourists" who I surely must be confusing with Koreans are indeed not much different, on their own turf, from Koreans on theirs.

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THE EYES OF THE HUNTER

Some people then ask me about the fact that a lot of my street photography includes a lot of women. People sometimes ask, quite suspiciously, "why?" Isn't that problematic? Aren't I doing something wrong? Or perhaps this is a sign of my perversity? After a long time consciously watching Korean women through the viewfinder of my camera, on top of the all but unconscious "watching" I automatically do as a function of male desire - my male "gaze" - it struck me that many Korean women remind me of drag queens. Obviously, I am being a bit facetious, but only a little bit.

This observation goes right to the heart of my thoughts about what I describe as the "fetishized femininity" that defines female identity here. I don't mean for my observations, like most of my photography - to be inherently comparative by locating everything in relation to my own life experience in the US or other countries I have visited or lived in. But since the standard Korean defense against any critique of things problematic is comparative equivocation, (the most popular form being "there are good and bad people everywhere," followed by "you have X in America, too!"), I must inevitably begin by first explaining myself and what assumptions I am working with.

Every culture/society/country has different problems and issues, rooted in specific histories and informed by various cultural traits and tendencies. America's prosperity was predicated upon - literally built upon - land taken by force and false treaties from people who were already living on it. The quick answer to labor issues and getting rich quick was the importation of the cheapest labor you could find: slaves. This then became a system that utilized race to mark a permanent slave status, which evolved into a racial apartheid the likes of which the world had never seen. Fast forward a few hundred years, and Americans still have a particular problem with and obsession over race that is particularly American way. Koreans may perhaps discriminate against people of other races and nationalities nowadays, so that now there is a pattern of racialized discrimination here as well. But for an American to say "Hey - we're not the only ones with a discrimination problem. Look! The Koreans have it, too!"

Equivocation can't work here, for obvious reasons. The histories are different. Any equivocation eliminates the fact of historical and cultural specificity. That's the high-brow argument. The low-brow argument is simply that "Two wrongs don't make a right" and what the hell does one case have to do with the other, anyway? OK - people in other countries do similar bad things; does this suddenly mean that they are above criticism?

So what does this have to do with Korean women, my camera, and the "male gaze?" So we've talked about sex work in Korea. Yes, the oldest profession exists everywhere, any which way it can. We know that gender discrimination exists in most places, but we know that the matter of degree is quite important. The same can be said for something as abstract as the construction of female identity, especially in capitalist, industrialized economies with active consumer cultures. Add in the factors of being patriarchal societies with market-driven mass media that utilize women's bodies as conduits through which to market and sell commodities, notwithstanding the fact that a large portion of the economy deals with the buying and selling of women's bodies as commodities in themselves - and it can be easily argued that there is enough of a common framework of comparison within which to identify and talk about the crucial differences. We wouldn't be talking about the moral question of the high degree of sex work in Korea if this country were still undeveloped, or vastly different from many other industrialized, capitalist democracies. But the case is that Korea is materially and socially like Norway, America, Germany, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, etc. The degree of "development" isn't the same, but the mode of existence is.

At least when Koreans generally favorably compare their country to others, this is the framework they're using; the boast that Korea has the most developed IT infrastructure in the world doesn't get supported with comparisons to war-torn Eritrea or the former Sovet-bloc Republic of Georgia. The comparison happens between such powerful nations as Japan, Germany, and the United States. This is the framework within which differences between how women are socialized becomes meaningful; but again, the point here isn't to equivocate, but to establish the undeniable commonality that enables us to label the degree of sex work in a given country as relatively embarrassing. So if we assume that meaningful differences exist between essentially similar societies, and that certain aspects of such societies can be called - whether in terms of scale or degree - better or worse than others, it follows that we can make assertions about things such as the relative degree of gender discrimination, treatment of ethnic or religious minorities, the quality of public health care, or equal access to decent public eduction, we should also be able to see peculiarities in terms of how people are socialized, and what relationship this might have to the kind of factors that were just mentioned.

And if we look at the way women in general carry themselves here -  or the way female identity itself is constructed - there are myriad ways to notice a particularly Korean aspects of the gendered mode of appearance, behavior, speech, and overall comportment. When you look at the social realities surrounding women in Korea - a country sporting one of the highest rates of sex work in the industrialized world, where there are more sex workers than school teachers, where women in skimpy attire promote everything from cars to toothbrushes, and for which the Gender Empowerment Measure therefore puts Korea near the bottom of the scale of 70 measured developed and undeveloped countries alike, right next to countries in which polygamy, "honor killings," and domestic violence is de facto, if not de jure legal - surely this must affect the expectations men have for women, how women see themselves in terms of these expectations, and the creation of general codes of interaction between the two genders.

Surely the expectations placed upon men, the acceptance of aggressive behavior with a "boys will be boys" attitude, solidified with the two years and two months spent in the hazing society of compulsory military service, reinforced in the workplace by a rigid, miliatarized heirarchy, and bolstered by the constant and open access to women's bodies as objects of visual and sexual consumption - must have some affect on the way men see themselves as men.

But I know that many people aren't going to simply take my words on their own merit. Let me defer to authority and quote the scholar John Berger, from his text Ways of Seeing:

"Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves."

So I am not arguing that the very character of feminity is fundamentally different in Korea. It's not so a question of being different as it is simply a matter of a difference of sheer effort. Korean men often boastingly ask me "Aren't Korean women more beautiful than American women?" I usually begin my reply with a "They sure are!" but before I let them enjoy that assuring feeling, I continue with my reply, which is that if most college-age American girls dressed in skirts, high heels and makeup to walk out of the door – as they did in the American 1950's – working women were required to wear uniforms like schoolgirls, with skirtlines well above the knee, and plastic surgery was so ubiquitous that it had been offered as the first prize in fast food chain contests for high school girls (as Lotteria did two years ago) - I would have to describe American women as the most beautiful in the world.

The state of Korean women's "beauty" does not seem natural, effortless, or easy. It seems the result of a constant self-surveillance, strict regime of dietary control, a constant pressure to wear what others do and follow fashion trends. All of this effort is marked by the ubiquitousness of mirrors everywhere – in elevators, staircases, and especially on the desks of nearly all working workers. Just who are Korean women preening for?

And it's not that only foreign men notice this and find it a little strange - most Western women I have talked to do as well. In fact, I would think that women would notice even more than men would. An American friend of mine put it succinctly when she said "I never felt like such a tomboy before coming to Korea." On the level of femininity that defines the norm of gendered life here, most Western women I know have given up trying to compete. Just looking at the face-centric emphasis on "cute" - before even getting to the nearly requisite eye and nose jobs, the black contact lenses that make the irises look bigger, the straight "magic perm" and color, the all-too frequent use of false eyelashes -  the daily commitment of applying makeup alone requires getting up from 15 minutes to an hour early, depending on your particular level of fastidiousness. Add on the fact many Western women can't even buy brassieres, shoes, or depending on who you are - any clothes at all - in Korea, a lot of women end up feeling like the Sasquatch, hurrying to lumber away from the eyes of the frightened city-dwelling humans who want to capture you for scientific study.

In this sense, I definitely see something in the Korean streets about the way femininity itself is represented, and it is quite striking to me as an outsider, a Westerner, as well as a man. To a large extent, I see the working of fetish, in a way that I never saw before in my home country, or in many other places to which I had traveled in the world.

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THE FETISH IN THE IMAGE

Freud says that objects of fetish are simply things charged with the sexualized memories of early childhood. For example, he argued, when little tots lock their little Freudian libidos onto Mom, her feet are the parts of her body often in closest proximity.  Post-Freudian arguments would more broadly point to fetishized objects parts metonymically representative of the whole – the high-heeled female foot, in this interpretation, is an object given sexualized power by society as the embodiment of something essentially feminine and sexual. The high heel is a both a symbol of the entire sexually desirable female figure herself, even as the object/part itself takes on its own sexualized meaning. Put even more simply, it is a part that represents the whole (e.g. high heel=woman), but has special meaning as an object with meaning unto itself. The high heel is woman or femininity itself, a fact that helps charge the object with its special meaning.

I kinda like this argument the best (and we can throw in some Freud there, too), because if we assume that Korean society in general 1) values women more for their appearance and sexual attractiveness than any other attribute, and 2) their bodies are constantly presented in a quantitatively and qualitatively more sexually commodified way, then we can come to the tentative conclusion that women in Korea are much more fetishized. By this I mean to suggest that they value, utilize, wear, and purposefully display more totem objects of sexualized femininity than in any other place I have seen, with the exception of perhaps Italy or Russia. And is it a coincidence that these are also cultures well known for a strict tradition of male chauvinism, what some may call machismo?

Indeed, as we look at the heavy accessorizing that is positively a pastime here on the streets of almost any neighborhood where large numbers of people go, the adornment and high value placed on the female body is obvious, and not even in need of the long, theoretical argument that I just presented. But we know darn well that if I didn't give such a detailed argument, people would just say that I was talking out the side of my neck. At least you know now exactly upon what bases I am resting my assumptions.

Since images of women's fetishization is part of what I'm trying to capture on film, being apologetic for my male gaze – the "fetishistic scopophilia" that I was told during my first undergraduate film class that all heterosexual men possessed  – would be counterproductive and downright futile. Of course, sometimes I feel like a big, fat pervert trying to capture the pull of the fetish with my camera, especially since disconnecting my pleasure in the process is impossible; but not taking a picture and regretting it later is a far worse feeling than that caused by people falsely thinking me to be some kind of sexual deviant with a camera. And to a certain extent, they're right anyway. As more than just a passive watcher, when I am enabled by my camera, my fetishistic scopophilia is in full effect.

So let me drop the academic façade that most people entering into controversial waters tend to hide behind, and let my male gaze guide this part of the book, just as it has my camera. Let me break down for you how I see the image of Woman in this culture as nothing more than the sum of her fetishized parts. Of course, this is merely my feeling and interpretation, but I did not enter this culture with these ideas or assumptions. There was something about observing the way men and women carried themselves here, interacted with each other, that brought me to have the thoughts I have now. I spent countless hours just watching people through my lens, trying to predict what they would do, which direction they would walk in, whether a person was going to sit or stand; I simply observed and became good at not only feeling the rhythms of the street, but also at starting to decode the subtle signals that are passed along through clothes, facial expressions, small gestures, and even posture itself.

I have identified several themes in my shooting as my time in Korea continues, and as I began to get settled into life here and normalized into becoming an everyday Seoulite myself, I innevitably began to lose a lot my photographic "edge." This was a process I had already expected to start happening, so after around a year, and after hearing a lot of people comment on the fact that there seemed to be a lot of women in my pictures, I followed my nose and went in the direction of other, more specific themes that spoke more directly to things I was starting to think about in Korean society on an academic level. Women, the commodification of their bodies, discrimination, and other topics were directions I began to follow – and still do.

As a person possessing desire for the female form here - whether you are a straight man, lesbian, or gay man who just appreciates the raw beauty of the female form itself – perhaps you might recognize some of the parts that attracted not just my own eye, but yours as well. And if such small symbols, gestures, and signals weren't really important, why else would these the patterns I observe even exist, let alone be the focus of so much attention, consumption, and presentation?

Let's leave Freud for a moment. What are these small signs and symbols that I notice? Why do I think them to be important? As the more contemporary, albeit fictional, psychoanalyst Hannibal Lecter so aptly observed "We covet what we see every day." Let's think about what those things are on the level of fetishistic, photographic detail – from coiffed head to pedicured toe – and see what we come up with:
- the sheen of shiny, straight black hair, like in the Prell™ commercials

- the confident "hair flip," or twirl, or continued absent-minded stroking
- big, black false eyelashes, flitting up and down, up and down
- big, round, black contacts to make doe-eyes with
- shiny peach lip gloss, constantly reapplied
- the ever-present Korean female "pout"
- the paleness of the classical Korean face, as maintained by whitening powders, creams, and base/foundation Twincake™
- big eyes and noses with European bridges
- French-manicured, slender fingers formed in poses of feminine delicacy
- upper arms that are similar in thickness to the forearms
- stockinged thighs peeking out from under checkered, pleated skirts
- thin legs in jeans made to look longer in heels reaching out under an overly long pantleg
- the rounded legs of "office girls" in stocking and slippers
- thigh-hi tights like in the old Britney Spears schoolgirl video nobody ever admits to having made any effort to watch
- knee-high tights
- pedicured feet and toes in the barest sandal heels possible, coupled with a high skirt, to create a "near-naked" effect
- heels dangling from suspended feet, twirling in the air
- the "skinny fat" legs that are thin, yet jiggle with each step because of the lack of exercise and likely impact of past eating disorder
- pigeon-toed walking
- overly effeminate hip-swaying and sashaying, a la Ru Paul

Now, I'm not saying that all Korean young women display these totems, or engage in the specific behavior described above. And the fetish elements listed above is not exhaustive. The point is that all of the little fetishes are fairly universal, and are practiced by women in my own culture, as well as other places I have been that have thriving consumer cultures that fetishize women. They are all elements that do not exist outside of the male gaze. But what is different is that when I am in America, these fetishes and totems don't occur with nearly the same frequency as they do here. In fact, they occur with a low enough frequency as to mark someone who engages in a large number of these fetishes at the same time as unusual. Here, it's more common, I would humbly argue, than not.

My male gaze is always engaged here, whereas in the States, even on the Berkeley campus, which is supposed to be home to America's weirdest and wild, I can turn it off. Or my gaze isn't activated enough for it to be constantly noticeable. If the fetish signals given off by women were detectable as a tick on a mechanical detector, in America, I would get occasional clicks as I pass by the occasional outright fetishistic display, with rapid buzzes caused by a relative few number of women who've really laid it on thick and heavy. In Korea, the sound emanating from my detector would be more of a constant dull roar, increasing and decreasing in volume and density, depending on where you went. This is how I see Korea as different from America, or most other places in the West I have ever been to – well, as I mentioned, besides Italy.

So, I said above that the very character of feminity is not different here, that it's not a fundamental difference in form as much as it is simply a matter of sheer effort. The interesting test of this idea lies in considering the way men of different cultures visually and physically consume women here. Applying my logic within a sort of self-enclosed set of conditions, like an Einsteinian "thought experiment," let's think about the ever-popular and (from my eye) strangely controversial topic of foreign men who date Korean women.

We know the arguments. Foreign men - especially white, North American men - enjoy all kinds of sexual license with Korean women, alternatively loving and leaving them. Korean women are hapless dupes under the spell of unscrupulous white men who come to take advantage of the cultural capital of their priveleged passports, English native speaker status, white skin, and most importantly - the innocence and trust of the Korean female. What's more, the ultimate evil rears its ugly head as white men "exoticize" and "objectify" Korean women.

And I'm not saying that there are not a lot of sleazy foreigners who are only here for easy money and easy women. C'mon. Back when I was here in 1994, 90% of the people I saw in Korea were not much of a step above bail jumpers or seeming criminals on the run. Back then, all the money was in Japan (with the powerful yen), Korea was much more rough, rough, rough around the edges, still well under the radar of even the most ardent Asiaphiles. Contracts back then were not worth the paper they were printed on, and hagwon owners did unspeakable things to keep their foreign walking dictionaries prisoner. Who, other than a fugitive from justice, would come here? Well, another 5% were the "Men in Black," who brought the Bible and a buddy to keep them clean amidst a whole lotta unholy temptation. Then there were the last 5%, of which I was a part, who came in really specific, yet random ways, as part of the Peace Corps in the old days, or the Fulbright ETA program, which was the latter-day reincarnation of that venerable program after it had been shut down in Korea during the 80's because the country had developed too much to receive any further Peace Corps aid. There were also a few people who were simply curious, truly open-minded, and simply here for the adventure. I always tipped my hat to that 10% of us who were all here on some kind of mission – whether personal, religious, or otherwise.

But still, the majority of foreigners at the time were male, white, and the majority of these waegukin were pretty shady characters. Nowadays, things are a lot different, despite what you might see in the sensationalist Korean media. Still, I find the perhaps less-than-honorable motives of some members of my gender fairly non-surprising. Actually, despite what a lot of Korean men might say, it is actually not a matter of a particularly problematic way that foreign men treat or look at Korean women; it's really more of a question of the social capital that the exoticism of being foreign, male, and American provides. This

So, it's not just the heady cocktail of exoticized, racial difference topped off with a spritz of unequal power relations between nationalities - as most detractors of interracial mixing and/or people who are "concerned" about "foreign men dating Korean women" seem to think, as they continue to believe in the stereotyped image of the oversexed, predatory, white male English teacher having fun with hapless Korean virgins. No, there's something else that is important to point out here in regards to Korean fetishized femininity and this simplistic stereotype.

What is more interesting to me is the fundamental way men and women tend to interact in general here, how Korean "men" and "women" signify themselves as gendered and sexualized beings in this culture. I would argue then, that the white male hagweon teacher with a case of sex on the brain isn't necessarily just looking at Korean women as exotic, racialized objects to be conquered in a way that is fundamentally different from how many Korean men look at Korean women. I believe that a particular foreign guy is simply picking up on the way gendered sexuality and relations happen in general, as well as how they happen in Korea, especially since the signals themselves - the glint of thigh peeking out of a short skirt, the extra curve of the calves created by high heels, meticulously-applied makeup, the ubiquitous straight perm falling around the sides of the face, an affected and knowingly cutesy pout, specks of light caught on gold anklets and hoop earrings, accentuated by the nowadays de rigeur pedicure, along wth myriad other accountrements ad nauseum - are not so culturally specific. In fact, they are comfortably familiar – with the only difference being that the air seems to far more full of these signs and symbols than is true back home.

After all, we are certainly not talking about the far more culturally specific charm of a coy, half-hidden smile peeking out from behind a veil in an Islamic nation, nor is it the Chosun-era sexy curve of the upturned big toe in a white, traditional shoe sneaking up from beneath the skirtline of a pink hanbok. The fetish signs given nowadays are, for all intents and purposes, universal in their meaning. A Korean woman could easily walk down the streets of Paris or Cairo and turn heads, were she appropriately armed with all the necessary fetishistic ammunition she seems to be here: short skirts, strappy summer heels, long, flowing hair, makeup, and a confident strut. It is important to illustrate that if a western woman wore what Korean women wear back in her home country, the signals would be clear, even if the background contexts are different in terms of relative levels of accepted fetish (e.g. a woman wearing knee socks, high heels and a Britney Spears skirt in the middle of winter in Ohio might stop cars, whereas in New York City, people would just stare, and in Seoul at the moment, this particular fashion trend is mere normal.

My point here is that foriegn men don't necessarily fetishize Korean women andy differently than Korean men do. They just have more sexual and economic capital that results from possessing any or all of the following factors that an everyday Korean man might not, namely: white skin, an American passport, being a native speaker of English, and being a racial and sexual curio for adventurous Korean women. After living here for as long as I have, in as many places and roles that I have, I would say that the assumption that social and sexual power rise in direct proportion to one another to be a correct one, and the associated bad behavior that I have seen men possessing a lot of such power has been pretty equally spread  the male gender, regardless of nationality.

Put simply, both Korean and non-Korean men with high degrees of sexual capital, seem to behave similarly towards women. This is why both white English teachers and playboy Korean men with money tend to have the same stereotypes among many Korean women. And if we want to talk - albeit anecdotally - about the bad ethics of foreign males here to have sexual adventures, Korean American men are often even worse offenders than the obvious racially different men who we tend to easily notice. The KA's I have seen here get the full benefit of the American power trip, but it is justified and rationalized by the idea that it's OK, since these are "our" women, from the same minjok. In other words, it's OK because it's not "interracial."

What is funny is that Korean society tends to scandalize Korean women for dating or playing with a foriegn man – look at the so-called "scandal" of some Korean girls voluntarily doing some risque dances with white men in a Hongdae bar, yet society accepts far worse behavior in any neighborhood "room salon" or "business club" because at least they are Korean men. We all know that most Koreans simply don't like any suggestion of interracial romance or sex; but the fact is that, in this highly sexist culture that primarily sees women as sex objects first and everything else as secondary, why would anyone expect foreign men to behave any differently than Korean men would in the same situation, especially if they were armed with the power of white skin and American power? By viewing women in Korea through my viewfinder, I slowly came to a theory that describes the social position of women in general as aesthetic objects and that helps explain many aspects of gender interaction and signs of remaining gender inequality here. Of course, lest this become a sociology thesis, I need to present my argument photographically; this is appropriate, because it was street photography and allowing myself to connect with what film scholar Laura Mulvey calls the "pleasure of the visible" that allowed me to start forming my ideas.

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WOMEN AS BOTH CONSUMER AND THE CONSUMED
I wanted to present these shots as ample food for discussion about the ways in which women's bodies are both objects and conduits of consumption.

When I talk about the 도우미 (doumi - "model assistants" who can be found in everything from grocery stores to ones singing rooms), people often ask me why their existence seems to bother me so much. What I tell people is that it is not their mere existence that bothers me, but rather it is the sheer oversaturation of the doumi into the realm of the everyday that I find the most problematic and even degrading – both to the customers and the workers themselves.

Of course, I am making a value judgement and perhaps it might seem as though 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 cheapens the entire endeavor for everyone involved. 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 a new, 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 demeaning, not to mention ineffective. Who really makes a decision to buy razor blades because a girl in a short skirt is holding them? Or register for telephone service? And don't the doumi lose thiei effectiveness once they become ubiquitous?

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 introduce a major new type of beer, or were providing the aesthetic support for the launch of a new product. But they certainly weren't standing in every aisle of the grocery store, handing out chunks of cheese samples, or passing out coupons.

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 are helping to launch the latest and greatest MP3 player at an electronics show – these women are more than happy to pose for pictures. In fact, that's understood to be part of the job. They add flair to the whole affair, since they are larger-than-life people, they are people you don't see every day, they are unusually attractive – it is like meeting a movie star, for their appeal lies in their being very not everyday people; moreover, the events they are hired to promote, are also, by their very nature, unusual.

But selling cooking oil or Spam™ using similar 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 were a job that they would rather not be recorded on their 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 such observations are the sort of thing one might best notice if one is a member of the group.

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 Tocqueville's work is still read and highly valued for his razor-sharp insight into the American character that still holds true now. 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."

So what am I saying here? In a nutshell, I am interested in how women are consumed, specifically as their bodies are objectified and commodified within the fiscal economy. My argument draws a link between the low overall status of women (as reified by the UN Gender Empowerment Measure), the relatively high degree of fetishized commodification in everyday life, and the surprisingly (for a country with Korea's level of economic and social development) large role that sex work still plays in the formal economy. I am not arguing that these things are somehow causal, but rather that they reflect different parts of the big picture regarding how women are valued and regarded in Korean society, as well as how they value and regard themelves.

"Self-Portrait"

"Consumption of Consumption"

Here, I want to try and talk about how women exercise their considerable economic power as consumers, and how this relates to how women consume monetarily in order to participate in a cultural economy in which they are objects of aesthetic consumption – this brings us back to the "gaze" in both its male and female forms. For those of you who've been paying attention so far, now you might be able to kind of put it all together, understanding my entire meta-argument about sex work and its relationship to the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), my essay focusing on the piecemeal fetishization of the female body, as well as the pictures both above and below – all within a larger argument.

One major social activity, one of the most common ways of participating in the cultural economy, and one of the biggest venues for human interaction in a largely developed Korea – is that of consumption. Economists tend to think of this social activity in a purely functional sense, but alternatively, anthropologsists and sociologists understand consumption to be a major mode of social interaction in itself. Since humans have decided to live in close quarters with one another (urbanization) and define ourselves mainly in the capitalist terms of financial earning power, the economy itself has become a major conduit of social interaction and has come to partially define aspects of our individual identities.

Marx might argue that the commodification of the body as consumed object in itself is logical in a market society in which everything is commodified. And this commodification is importantly not just limited to objects, but abstract things that include our actions, abilities, and even ways of thinking. One might also make the link between the way in which the Korean female body is actually bought and sold for direct sexual consumption – the Korean government places the sex industry at 4.1% of the GDP and the YMCA at upwards of 5-6%, a high number for such a highly-developed economy – to the ways in which everyday women adorn and define themselves as sexualized and fetishized objects.

Beyond talking about how labor, now we are talking about items becoming monetarily valuable as they become cultural valuable as objects with which to adorn and mark ourselves in purely aesthetic ways. These objects – be they clothes to accentuate our bodies, makeup to accentuate the features of our face, or the gestures one may use to appear "coy" or "feminine" – or all become a part of our social, sexual, and even political identities. They become a part of how we define ourselves in the world, which also helps determine the ways others regard us. In this way, they become, by definition, materially important.

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CONSUMING WOMEN

In my travels as a photographer, my eye has been drawn to the many women – virtual and actual – on display behind glass. Stronger than any actual link I might intellectually set up here, the reoccurring motif that I will call a "visual rhyme" – has continued to stick in my head. The photographic argument I make here through my camera may raise a lot of hackles, but it's a connection I won't lie about having made. Visually, it's quite compelling. What other links are there to be made, namely between what I posted about before – woman as consumers of the very things that make them objects of visual and sexual consumption.

"Women in Windows"

In general, my decision to take these pictures was made mostly in response to the common emotion I felt when confronted with each window: a kind of creepy revulsion, a sort of palpable and extreme unease. I never liked mannequins – they've always creeped me out. But when fully posed, dressed, and placed on display, I've never liked looking at them much. I had the same feeling when faced with the humans in the 4th picture, since you have the mannequin creepiness despite the fact that you're staring at real people.

"Femme Fatales"

"Fetish for All Ages"

"My Very First"

"Women in Waiting"

"The Final Costume"

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EXHIBITING WOMEN AND THE PLEASURES OF THE EVERYDAY

Actually, this was a picture that I had not been too excited about at the time I took it, but when I saw the negative, was completely enthralled. I remembered seeing the fascinating side of that bus in the Ehwa Women's University shopping area and having done multiple compositions in multiple shots before moving on. But now, looking at the theme of being "in transit," the picture spoke to me on two levels, because of the obvious kinetic motion of the picture's elements, on top of being stuck on the side of a bus; but in addition, the tongue-in-cheek nostalgia also suggested something about times, or culture, or – something – being in a state of transition. So, in short, I didn't know why, but it just felt kinda – arty. Yeah. Well, I'm intellectually and aesthetically swift enough to know that something's going on – I just knew I'd leave that up to interpretative powers of other folks. And hey, isn't it in the eyes of the person doing the interpreting that art really happens?

But there's even more going on in that picture, and having had it on display and scrutinized by myriad critical eyes greatly ramped up my thinking as to what had been going on in that picture to cause me to snap half a roll of it without even knowing why.

The biggest reason has to do with the fact that the image itself is the product of someone else's work – it is found art. I don't take many found art pictures, and I am always generally frustrated by the fact that my eye seems to work in a particular way, but seemingly only in that way. I do like my style, and I do think I can see things in certain ways that others might miss, but on the same note, my particular lens on the world is a fixed one. If I think about my photographic style, sometimes I irritate myself, since I do think that a lot of my failed shots, once broken down under my self-critical editorial gaze, reduce down to irritating visual cliché that is just plan embarrassing. At least, to me.

An even more obvious reason is the fact that this image is visually stunning. Yes, I chose to make an image of another image, and yes, I composed its several elements in a new way, but much of the power comes from the fact that it was easy to make the image "work," since the elements of it are just so damn good. Another reason this particular piece really worked for me must also have to do with the fact that,  whoever the graphic designer was, s/he seemed to be interested in working with some of the same elements of femininity and fetish that had already begun to fascinate me and define a new theme in my own work.

A third thing to mention is that the stunningness of the original has a lot to do with it being an optical illusion.  A quick glance at the picture fools seemed to leave the impression that the picture was an image I made of an actual scene. I joked with several people during the exhibit that I only wished I knew models looking like that. But if you look at the picture long and close, you can see the elements that break the illusion completely – but still you have to be looking for them.

Element #1 – The two horizontal lines, cutting across the frame at about where you would slice the picture into thirds, which indicate that the woman and the doorway are indeed pasted over a solid face. The two lines are guides that allow a clean break away from the "illusion."

Element #2 – There's also a handle on a door right below the woman, which again reminds us that this is an image pasted over a solid surface.

Overall, I really dig this picture because of it 1) just being a good picture, 2) catching my eye in the way that it has been recently grown accustomed to searching for different ways the female body is fetishized, and 3) just being kinda sexy and funny. Whatever the marketing campaign or advertisement ( I actually don't know and I'd love for a reader in-the-know to write in and tell me!), the photography was cool, the design slick, and the presentation just plain fly.

So that's why I had to stick to my gut, throw this new image in the mix, and see what the reactions would be. It resulted in several people saying that it was their favorite image of the show, resulting in one actual buyer to boot.

"Happy Times"

In a city the size of Seoul, loneliness is a not an emotion felt only by the dispossessed or socially misfit, but is more of a mode in life. It's simply one of the inevitable rhythms of a place constantly in flux and motion, where we sometimes get caught on our own, between friends and familiar faces. On this particular evening, when I was walking from Myungdong to Chungmuro during an in-between moment of my own, I caught this young woman sitting motionless on a bench, oblivious to the business going on inside the "family restaurant" in front of which she was sitting, as well as to any passersby.

What she is thinking or even the state she is in is something about which I can offer little more than conjecture. I never saw her face and she never moved a muscle while I shot off several frames of her. She may have been catching a snooze before a whole slew of friends arrived, she may have just received a call from her boyfriend informing her that he had found a new love, or she may have just been feeling a bit sick. In the end, who know? What is more important is the impression this particular moment had on me, as well as the emotional color that this particular moment had when I pressed the shutter button.

For me, this picture capture a particular kind of feeling that I get as person who generally walks around this large city alone; in this moment, I felt an instant of connection with another lone soul who seemed to be sharing the lonely mode with me.

What make the picture work all the more is the obvious contrast between the apparent loneliness of the main subject and the advertisement behind the bench upon which she is sitting. Roughly translated, the message reads "A restaurant for getting together," but I am sure this translation will be contested because of its somewhat complex layering of elements: a combination of Korean adaptation of English words called "Konglish," a play on words via the Korean pronunciation of an English word, as well as a popular usage of pure Korean words. To break these elements down in the most specific way:

1) The Korean pronunciation of the English word for restaurant is "res-to-rang" (레스토랑). This is cognitively different from the Korean word for restaurant, which is shik-dang () and generally refers to a restaurant selling non-Western food. When people say "res-to-rang," they are generally referring to Western food; the concept of "family restaurant" has more to do with large food chains such as TGI Friday's, Outback Steakhouse, or Sizzler.

2) The sound "ting" comes from the Konglish (Korean + English) word "mee-ting," which refers to a particular kind of group date that many young people in which many young people participate, especially during the early college years. In a "mee-ting," an equal number of boys and girls who don't know each get together and pair off with the hopes of some spark finding itself able to develop into something more. "Mee-tings" are hit-or-miss and young folks often go through rounds and rounds – pretty apparently the product of a culture in which people without some direct interpersonal tie (a relative, a friend's friend, or co-worker) are generally uncomfortable initiation conversations or any kind of personal relationship. The idea of the "ting" extended from when the "mee-ting" became popular after the late 1980's into other kinds of social liaisons: the "sogae-ting," which is a combination of the Korean word for "introduction" and the getting-together meaning of "ting" from the original Konglish "mee-ting." A "sogaeting" is what an American would call a "blind date." But there are more. From the mid-1990's, there was "phone-ting," which was a way of meeting over the phone through a variety of technical methods too complex-yet-mundane worth discussing here, along with even a "sex-ting," although the actual popularity of this kind of "ting" is debatable. In the final analysis, "ting" refers to a particular kind of social gathering.

3) The term "ggiri" in Korea roughly means "in a group" and its associated alliteration "ggiri-ggiri" strains my ability to translate, but I'd tentatively offer that it means something akin to "all together" and "as a group."

Combine them together in a creative way, and the words in the advertisement become interesting: "ggiri-ggiri ting restorang" is a layered bundle of meanings. Start with the fact that we all know that Outback Steakhouse is considered a "family restaurant" in Korea, but has replaced the "family" part with "ggiri-ggiri ting," which itself roughly comes out as "a place for your group (ggiri) to get together" and the ad's copy seems pretty smart.

Does all that armchair linguistics make sense?

So when you combine that message with the happy picture of the couple (adding the additional suggestion that the place is good for the good old-fashioned kind of couple-oriented ting, then juxtapose that against the obvious figure of loneliness that the young girl poses, we get a little bit of irony, both in the visual contrast between the smiling couple as symbol of fun and togetherness against the lone girl, as well as the conflict of textual messages the same girl constitutes when combined with the ad copy.

It's an overly-close reading of signs and symbols, but that is what advertisers specialize in; what they hadn't bargained for was the accidental and fleeting message offered in this particular instance. For all these reasons, the girl sitting in front of this ad on this particular bench offers a single chance to take a unique kind of picture. That is the beauty of street photography, which is the very definition of capturing random elements that together to define that perfect "decisive moment" in which to press the shutter button and make an artistic statement out of very mundane things.

That's why I am a street photographer, that's why this particular shot is a favorite of mine, and that's why it was prominently displayed in my exhibit.