Scribblings of the Metropolitician

Beginner Photo Classes for April Are Forming!

We've already got one class slated to start on Sunday, April 3rd and if there is demand for more, we can form another one.

This is the link to the Sunday class as a Facebook event, which you should RSVP to if you are going to register. 

And here's the link to the detailed course description and syllabus for those of you who would like a lot more detail about the class, its methodology, and its content.

Please note that you can contact me directly through the email address linked at the top right of this page, and that all payment information and directions are on the Studio 11 Photography Facebook page.

 

 

 

Come to My Exhibition: "The Fashion of the Korean Street"

When: Sunday, March 27th at 12:00 noon, showing until April 29th
Where: Cafe Bene at Chungmuro Station, right outside of Exit #5

Oh, yes. It's been a long time coming, and I'm happy to be showing off some of my work, after several years. And as many of you have seen, my work has progressed from street and documentary into street fashion, and now into the studio. But my heart is still in the streets of Seoul, which is where this exhibition will be coming from.

See ya'll there? Here's the formal announcement -- and if you're coming, please hit the Facebook link here and RSVP, maybe even to add me as a friend! And definitely keep up with changes to the event and announcements there!

THE EXHIBITION
Seoul has become an international city where fashion trends from all over the world come together, mix, and find increasingly broader expression. The Korean street has always been a place where old and new, traditional and modern, fast and slow have come colliding together. From old street markets to glass and steel skyscrapers, the hustle and bustle of the Korean street makes Seoul appealing as one of the best pla...ces in the world for street photography.

More recently, in just the past several years, as the prevailing winds of fashion trends have come into contact with Korea's super-connected Internet culture, Korean fashion has gone from the safety of blacks, whites, and grays to a melange of every fashion trend from around the world that combine into one another and find themselves remixed into a particularly Korean flavor.

A new "Korean wave" in fashion is brewing on the Korean street, and all kinds of personalities are finding expression through clothing, a new feeling of openness, and a respect for diversity in a new culture that is a celebration of the new.

This exhibition celebrates the fast, frenetic, and fabulous feel of the Korean street.

THE PHOTOGRAPHER
Having begun focused photo work in Korea in 2002, Michael Hurt is Korea's first foreign street photographer and street fashion photographer. By mixing the anthropological approach of taking things “as they are” with an unapologetically voyeuristic and fetishizing gaze, Michael is fascinated by the defining aspects of the Korean urban landscape, whether it be ajussis roasting meet in the street, or a prostitute showing her wares to passersby. Michael's photographs reflect a stark realism that matches the dynamic, frenetic, and extreme aspects of life in the world's most quickly, forcefully, and compressedly developed society.

Even in his street fashion photography, Michael works as a photographer - not a fashionista with a camera - to capture unique aspects of Korea's “clothing culture as colorful display,” whether fleeting, international trend or homegrown, flowery kitsch. In Michael's photography, mostly shot in wide-angle and often from the hip, one can feel "the hungry eye" of a Walker Evans, the obsessive desire to "see the world through the camera" that defined Garry Winogrand, the feeling of isolation and outsiderness that shaped Robert Frank's “The Americans,” and the familiarity and love for the Korean street in particular that motivated Korea's greatest street shooter, Kim Ki Chan, to keep shooting street until the day he died. Presently, Michael is working on a portrait series of Korean movie actors and is a working fashion photographer. But the streets continue to be Michael’s main stage and runway for the feel and fashion that defines life in Korea.

Shockingly Unprofessional NoCut News Editor

Wow. 

I just read Gusts of Popular Feeling's post about this poorly-written article on NoCutNews web site, and is my wont, I called the newspaper and asked questions about the story. I called 02-2650-1100 (which is listed as the 대표전화 (official line) at the bottom of their web site, and was presented with an automated list of options. I hit the first one (1), which was for the editorial department. A man promptly answered, and I informed him that I was inquiring about the "'짝퉁' 원어민 강사 몰려온다" story. I don't yell and scream, and questions were clear and professional. I, as a reader, had two points: to inquire about the story, and to also complain that I believed their reporting on foreigners to be irresponsible.

Everything started off fine, and when the guy pulled up the story, I complained that it had a lack of clear statistic or even a named source to at all bolster the claim that there was a wave of fake native speakers descending on Daejeon, and that there were other inaccuracies in the article. 

His response? After cutting me off as I was describing my problems with the article, he simply pointed out that it wasn't a NoCut News reporter, and was an article from another paper. When I reminded him that it was published on their SITE (I know the difference between an article in the Naver news feed and a direct link to a newspaper's article), he brushed it off and said that I was mistaken and the newspaper had "no responsibility" for what people from the outside or in other places wrote.

I was a little taken aback, and as is my habit when I hear something surprising in Korean, I repeated back what I had heard: "무책임이라고요?" (You assume NO responsibility?) He responded that they didn't. I pressed on, since that doesn't make sense and seems like a copout (not to mention an implicit acknowledgement of how bad the story was, since he immediately washed his hands of it after he pulled it up), I asked if the editorial department doesn't at all vet (확인) what goes out on their site, under their name. He said it was "impossible to check/control" ("확인 할 수 없습니다") what goes out with stories coming in from outside writers. 

That answer's not much better, since it either sounds like NoCut News either has horrible editorial oversight and needs to fix their system, or he's feeding me a line of crap. If you're publishing something as an ARTICLE that professes to be news, and not a reporter's blog, isn't it the editorial department's responsibility?

At which point, the guy on the phone, seeming to be weary of my questions, which I felt were both legitimate and made to the proper listed authority on their site, started raising his voice. I pointed out that this wasn't the only article, actually, and that the bigger issue was that of negative reporting on foreigners in their paper, and that there was a clear pattern of generally negative stories done on foreigners, and I pointed out that one could even such a pattern "racist."

At that point, he lost it. He was yelling, saying that I can't say such a thing. I said -- and it was at this point that I actually asked him, very calmly, why he was yelling ("왜 큰 목소리로 말씀하시는 거에요?) and he responded that it made him feel bad (기분 나쁘게 하지 말고...) and such. I was actually pretty surprised, and I pointed out that I was criticizing his newspaper, not him, and was clearly not yelling, and he should be more professional. I reminded him again that I was making an official call, to the listed number, and rhetorically asked whether was I making some mistake? Was I doing something wrong? (이렇게 알아보면 제가 무슨 잘 못 하고 있나요?  제가 무슨 나쁜 짓을 하고 있나요?) 

I then pointedly asked him to whom I was speaking, at which point he started saying his name, to the effect of Hong something-something, but he changed his mind mid-sentence and asked me for MY name, at which point I promptly told him "마-이-클 허-트" and gave this web address, and even started spelling M-E-T-R...

He cut me off, saying that whatever -- you can't say this about our newspaper, and that I obviously "don't know anything about Korea" since I was inquiring about this article the newspaper had "no responsibility" for, and then he just started talking by himself, and I couldn't get a word in edgewise (which is no mean feat!) as he had clearly blown a gasket. 

I got in a few fragments, such as "Why are you behaving this way, this is an official inquiry" (공식적으로 알아보는 건데 본인이 신문의 대표아니냐...) at which point he responded to the tune that he didn't know who I was (I tried to tell him again and was quickly dismissed) and I was just "some reader" or someone (at which point I said something to the effect of, "That's right. I'm a reader. Can't a reader make this phone call to an editor?") but he was literally not allowing me to speak anymore and was clearly raising his voice enough that I'm sure anyone within earshot on his end would be wondering what the ruckus was all about.

At the end, he was like, "I don't have time for this, I'm working" and I pointed out that -- and I stopped him at this point -- "Isn't this your work? I'm making an official inquiry about your newspaper. Related to the newspaper. Are you supposed to behave this way?" I pointed out that even a high school newspaper wouldn't act this way, which may have been a bit mean, but he was already waaaaay over the line. But I still wasn't yelling, and I reminded him again that "I called the number listed on the site, I was asking questions and making points about an article IN THEIR NEWSPAPER. And doesn't anyone have the right to make such a call?"

At which point he paused, then said "I'm working now and hanging up." Then he hung up the phone.

Very professional, Mr. Hong. You represented your newspaper in just the way that seems to be befitting of NoCut News reputation. Even if you don't have some direct responsibility for the article, or the newspaper doesn't, blowing your top to a calm person making inquiries about how these articles are written on your official line isn't cool. 

Nor professional. 

But this isn't the first time. The last time I called a newspaper, and this was a major player (I can't remember clearly which one it was, so I won't drop their name here), when I simply told the secretary what it was regarding after she asked, and I told her that I wanted to speak with such and such reporter about an article, she transferred me, but then I was dropped. When I called back, she recognized my voice and literally hung up. I called back once more, thinking it was a mistake. "Hello, I think I was..." I was clearly hung up on again, with telephone receiver jostling against the phone base and all before the line cut out.

When I made the call today to NoCut News, my tone was frank and direct, but my questions and criticism were fair and related to the newspaper. Even after Mr. Hong started raising his voice, and I pointed out that I wasn't making any personal attacks or insults to him, he still refused to give his name after I asked for it again (when asked why, I said that I wanted to be accurate and specific as to whom I was talking to and be clear about where I had gotten this information from, and wasn't he speaking as the newspaper's representative, which he acknowledged, but seemed to piss him off more), but yet he continued talking about how the newspaper "doesn't have any responsibility," I can't say certain things about it, that my negative assessment was "just my opinion" and didn't matter, etc. After such statements, I was still reminding him that he was speaking officially, and I repeated back things he said to be certain.

But he wasn't concerned with the content anymore, but now was just plain making personal attacks, to the effect that I wasn't an official anybody, that I didn't know what I was talking about, I didn't know anything about Korea, and that I wasn't allowed to say such things about the newspaper.

Well, sir, I am. You work for a newspaper. You're not a private individual. You have the obligation to deal with an official inquiry PROFESSIONALLY, without raising your voice or taking it personally. Even if I HAD been rude, you still have the obligation to behave like a PROFESSIONAL, which you did not.

If this is the level of professionalism in Korean journalism, no wonder its overall quality is so low!

And don't blame being a young country, or not being as big as international newspapers. There are a lot of bigger, structural reasons why the quality of Korean journalism leaves much to be desired, but it doesn't require 200+ years of an open journalistic tradition, the protection of free speech laws, or having the great resources of The New York Times or the BBC.

It doesn't require anything like that to simply behave like a working professional when you receive a phone call to your WORK desk, regarding WORK, at 11AM in the morning, when you're WORKING.

It's not like I'm some crazy netizen who somehow got his personal cellphone number and called him during dinnertime, yelling like a madman. 

Mr. Hong, show some respect for your individual readers and your overall readership (even if you personally disagree with them), as well as for YOURSELF as a professional. 

The Question of "Why Is There No Looting In Japan" and Intellectual Pussyfooting

Let's cut to the chase: the REAL answer in people's heads who are "innocuously" asking the question that everyone is afraid to answer aloud is, "There's no black or brown people."

I mean, let's be frank here.  That's what EVERYONE is thinking. But the easy answer is the same as "Why do Asians show up in the US and become the "model minority" while blacks have been here for hundreds of years and well..."

I love it when people so easily pose these questions, with little or no thought to historical context and group consciousness. Here's the easy answer. Well, 1) there's not a disenfranchised, racialized underclass in Japan, and 2) the government is actually doing its JOB or people trust that it will. To the racist little birdie chirping in people's heads, note that middle or upper-class colored folks weren't rioting or looting in Katrina. And the media exaggerated and misrespresented many of the reports, anyway. There actually WASN'T a lot of looting in Katrina, although there was a whole lotta taking of things needed to survive. Or in the LA Riots, people were pissed at AUTHORITY. Shit, *I* wanted to go break a store window that night.

You know, it's not a part of minorities' genetic code. I hate all this implicitly racist "questions" in which everyone knows what the REAL question is but no one will say it outright. So I bit and stepped up to the plate. 

American blacks in New Orleans, the urban poor in the cities, who comprise the kids who give up on life and participate in cultures of death, as found in gang violence, drug addiction, as well as drug selling, have given UP. There IS no system for them, and yeah, when the power goes out or Rodney King gets beat down and the assailants convicted, or floodwaters rise and no helicopters are heard for 4 DAYS, it's about GETTIN' MINE. 

And remember history -- the history of urban rioting or looting is young, about as young as the existence of an underclass. If blacks were so unruly or genetically prone to wilding out against the man, blacks would have been stringing up Whitey, posting white heads on stakes, and "raping errybody" out there after slavery ended. But that never happened. 

If you want to talk about the real motivations for rioting and looting, you need to talk about WHY certain groups of people have less respect for authority, often constitute a perpetual underclass in the societies they are a part of, and are often simply just POOR. 

I'm not condoning it or condemning it. It's just WHY these things happen. But it's no socio/psychological mystery. But since people think it to be, I'll break it down even easier:

EDUCATED, WELL-FED FOLKS WHO ARE TREATED WITH RESPECT BY THEIR SOCIETIES AND WHO CONSEQUENTLY FEEL LIKE THEY HAVE A STAKE IN THEIR SOCIETIES DON'T LOOT OR RIOT. 

It's not a fucking mystery.

Oh, and there have been groups of people who have protested and even rioted against authority in Japan. Okinawa and Okinawans are treated like shit, and Okinawa is the dumping ground for everything the Japanese don't want on the main island. Even the author's assumption is faulty, since there HAVE been such incidents in even Japanese history.

The best example is in Japan's 2nd worst earthquake in history, the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, when the Japanese populace infamously spread rumors that Koreans were hoarding supplies, poisoning wells, and even using their magical powers (!) to curse the Japanese people. Ethnic Koreans were beaten to death, hung, and raped, murdered. 

"Derrrrrr, duhhhhhh, why don't the Japanese loot or riot?"

Must be their ancient culture, their reverence for their elders, or maybe something in their sake, or perhaps because they eat fish? Or maybe because there's no black people. All are about as equally likely explanations. Maybe their rice-based diet causes them to secrete less of a certain kind of hormone that decreases the tendency to express aggressions...derrrrr...duhhhhh...

Or maybe obvious socio-historical circumstances can provide the answer? 

Because at one time, after a similar great disaster, Japanese were some rioting, murderous mofos who strung up their ethnic minorities from the rafters. 

Stop the thinly-veiled innuendoes and pussyfooting around the real subject that EVERYONE is thinking about, by posing an open-ended question as if the thought of black people in Katrina or brown people in other countries' disasters NEVER popped into the writer's head when writing the article. 

Why do some cultures react to disaster by reverting to everyone for himself, but others – especially the Japanese – display altruism even in adversity?

Give me a fucking break. Some "cultures?!" Get specific, get into the history, get into societal circumstances. Because "Japanese culture" was once looting and rioting like a motherfucker against its ethnic minorities, namely the Koreans and the Ainu, which isn't suprising considering how seriously they were maligned and mistreated back then. It's not like that now, so things are different now.

It's not because of an ever-present, unchanging "culture."

This article, in asking its "innocuous" question, is disingenuous and intellectually cowardly. Perhaps the writer is not up to the task of writing about this issue responsibly, or as if he had half a brain. Don't half-step it -- deal with the issues squarely and do your homework -- or don't pick up your fucking pen in the first place. 

You can take your "culture" argument and stick it up your ignorant ass. This is the level of thinking that journalists have at the Telegraph, even on its blog? 

The Question of "Why Is There No Looting In Japan" and Intellectual Pussyfooting

Let's cut to the chase: the REAL answer in people's heads who are "innocuously" asking the question that everyone is afraid to answer aloud is, "There's no black or brown people."

I mean, let's be frank here.  That's what EVERYONE is thinking. But the easy answer is the same as "Why do Asians show up in the US and become the "model minority" while blacks have been here for hundreds of years and well..."

I love it when people so easily pose these questions, with little or no thought to historical context and group consciousness. Here's the easy answer. Well, 1) there's not a disenfranchised, racialized underclass in Japan, and 2) the government is actually doing its JOB or people trust that it will. To the racist little birdie chirping in people's heads, note that middle or upper-class colored folks weren't rioting or looting in Katrina. And the media exaggerated and misrespresented many of the reports, anyway. There actually WASN'T a lot of looting in Katrina, although there was a whole lotta taking of things needed to survive. Or in the LA Riots, people were pissed at AUTHORITY. Shit, *I* wanted to go break a store window that night.

You know, it's not a part of minorities' genetic code. I hate all this implicitly racist "questions" in which everyone knows what the REAL question is but no one will say it outright. So I bit and stepped up to the plate. 

American blacks in New Orleans, the urban poor in the cities, who comprise the kids who give up on life and participate in cultures of death, as found in gang violence, drug addiction, as well as drug selling, have given UP. There IS no system for them, and yeah, when the power goes out or Rodney King gets beat down and the assailants convicted, or floodwaters rise and no helicopters are heard for 4 DAYS, it's about GETTIN' MINE. 

And remember history -- the history of urban rioting or looting is young, about as young as the existence of an underclass. If blacks were so unruly or genetically prone to wilding out against the man, blacks would have been stringing up Whitey, posting white heads on stakes, and "raping errybody" out there. But that never happened. 

If you want to talk about the real motivations for rioting and looting, you need to talk about WHY certain groups of people have less respect for authority, often constitute a perpetual underclass in the societies they are a part of, and are often simply just POOR. 

I'm not condoning it or condemning it. It's just WHY these things happen. But it's no socio/psychological mystery. But since people think it to be, I'll break it down even easier:

EDUCATED, WELL-FED FOLKS WHO ARE TREATED WITH RESPECT AND WHO CONSEQUENTLY FEEL LIKE THEY HAVE A STAKE IN THEIR SOCIETIES DON'T LOOT OR RIOT. 

It's not a fucking mystery. Stop the thinly-veiled innuendoes and pussyfooting around the real subject that EVERYONE is thinking, posing an open-ended question as if the thought of black people in Katrina or brown people in other countries' disasters NEVER popped into the writer's head when writing the article. 

It's disingenuous and a sign of being an intellectual coward. Don't half-step it -- deal with the issues or don't pick up your pen in the first place. 

On Japan's Natural and Nuclear Nightmare

Of course, we all know what's going on in Japan. But I don't mean "nightmare" in the sense of just the disaster at hand. As a historian and specialist in one area of Asia, albeit not Japan, it occurs to me that what's going on right now is going to impact Japan in a way far deeper than one would of course assume a disaster of this magnitude would, in the concrete sense. What I mean is that Japan's "nuclear nightmare" has been going on for many decades already, and the ongoing dual disaster that we see unfolding right now must have a far darker and more foreboding feeling for the Japanese then most of us on the outside probably know.

One must consider the fact that modern Japanese identity is deeply informed by and has been concretely affected by both the dual specters of disaster and fear of the nuclear. And in the Japanese "nightmare," those two things come together, both in horrible reality as well as expression in fantasy.

As an American, it strikes me just how much 9/11, our first experience with a real attack on such a grand scale, has affected our psyche. And when talking about history's effect on national identity, which is the focus of my ongoing and never-ending dissertation, it raises some interesting points and questions. For example, if you have ever met and talked with German people, you know just how much their relatively recent dark history has affected the German sense of self. Or think about Russia's horrible experience with war and invasion over the last century.

In the Japanese case, the natural disaster looms large in the public mind for a long time, being an island nation subject to earthquakes, along with the term that the Japanese themselves coined, the "tsunami." Then came the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake. I am not a Japan specialiss, but I do know my general Japanese history and think about how incidents as large as this affect public thinking. For the Japanese, this was the first major experience with disaster in the modern period. Then came the Pacific War, which brought with it massive civilian bombing on a scale the world had never seen. This was topped off with the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which still stand in history as the only nuclear attacks on civilians in human history.

This fact has become a central part of Japanese identity, which created a sense of victimhood, one that is well deserved, but which one must note is also made possible by the fact that Japan's role as aggressor has been seriously downplayed in its own representations to and of itself. I am not trying to get into a debate about Japan's culpability for war crimes or textbook debates and the like. But as far as the fact of Japan having constructed itself as a victim of humanity's experimentation with nuclear power, this mention of the matching downplaying of Japan's role as a aggressor in that very conflict that created it as victim is quite pertinent. But that's as far as I'll go with that.

James Orr, in his book The Victim as Hero, which I came to own as part of my own dissertation research related to national identity in history, talks about all of these issues in detail, but the example that is most striking in the many historical arguments and cases he plays out is that of Godzilla.

And when you think about it, Godzilla and everything he represents, both symbolically and in terms of the original narrative of the first film, is the pop culture embodiment of Japan's nuclear nightmare. Godzilla is the product of rampant American nuclear testing in the Pacific, if you remember, and the creature itself is the mutated result of that testing on a small lizard. That creature grows into one of gargantuan proportions and comes ashore to wreak havoc upon the once-again beleaguered island nation. Godzilla is the walking embodiment of both the natural disaster, in terms of the actual destruction he brings, but is also necessarily the result of nuclear power gone very wrong. Importantly, the source of that destructive nuclear power is the United States, and the victim is Japan, clearly. But that particular blame is not so clearly laid, in that Godzilla also represents humanity's errant and arrogant experimentation with nuclear power in general, with Japan as victim.

Indeed, with the Hiroshima Peace Park as the clearest example, Japan has succeeded in constructing an ideology of victimhood, but not with the US as the sole recipients of blame, but with Japan coming to represent, through Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the living lessons of humanity's sole experiment with nuclear terror. There is no single aggressor in this context, but there is certainly a clear victim. And in the Godzilla narrative, it is also interesting that man's attempt to avert disaster vis-à-vis the monster is ineffective and impotent. Only the actions of a few plucky scientists, one of whom happens to be American, actually, succeeds in saving Japan.

And the lingering effects of America's bombings continued to affect the Japanese public in major ways, especially in terms of the nation's fish catch being affected by American nuclear testing in the Pacific, or the people who had to live with the lingering effects of radiation sickness and burns from the original atomic bombing sites. The nation literally had the scars of World War II and the twin nuclear blasts that ended humanity's most savage and bloodiest single conflict writ large and visibly across its skin.

But still, Japan amazingly was able to come to terms with nuclear power and harness that energy for its power plants. The single disaster at Three-Mile Island, and the much larger disaster at Chernobyl effectively killed and kept dead the nuclear power industry in the US, and it never came back. But in  nations like Japan, which had experienced and was living with the visible effects of nuclear radiation and its horror, being able to come to terms with this is an amazing thing. Perhaps those of you out there who are Japan specialists might like to chime in on this point, since I don't have much specific knowledge about politics or what it took for the Japanese public to come to this point.

With all this in the background, the present disaster has a much deeper irony and echoes further into the past then it would if the particular victims here or not Japanese. For Japan right now, one might stop and think about how deeply this will affect their psyche. Or in other words, one might think about just how serious this particular "nightmare" is for the Japanese.

You have the largest earthquake in recorded Japanese history, which brought with it synonymous that swept across entire cities, and then came the unthinkable: not one or two but three nuclear power plants in various stages of meltdown. This is literally all of Japanese culture's and the Japanese nation's various nightmares, from antiquity to the modern period, come true. In a single day.

For any human being, watching the YouTube videos of tsunamis sweeping away cars and airplanes and entire buildings elicits pangs of horror, worse than any of the many disaster movies we've all seen together; because this time, the public spectacle is real. Or thinking about nuclear power plants melting down is also, of course, really scary. But for the Japanese public, seeing civilians being checked by the authorities for radiation exposure, coupled with the actual destruction of the most massive earthquake in their history, along with the slow, sliding, disaster that tsunamis bring-- this must seem completely unreal. But the extra catch for the Japanese is that it's also going to feel hauntingly familiar.

And that's something worth thinking about as we tried to empathize and put ourselves, inevitably, in their shoes.

Some Notes on Modeling and the Studio

I've been starting to get more serious about getting better and more subtle with my lighting and fashion photography. After hunting around the Internet and looking at a lot of places, I've duplicated the lighting setup of a picture I liked a lot, which used a large umbrella softbox against neutral gray paper, set up high and off to the side of the model. I am also pushing myself to stop being so anal about making sure the model's face is "properly" and fully lit, using shadow to be more creative.

But as much as my new lighting configuration and pushing myself into other directions has made for better pics, I'm also getting some really expressive and awesome models. I found Shingoon through Facebook, as a suggestion of one of my ex-students, who is Shingoon's "junior." I had a feeling about her after looking at her Facebook pics, in which she was really self-confident and expressive. After some email and phone tag, we finally shot today, and although this was her first real professional shoot, she fell right into love with the lens and got comfortable fast. In short, the girl's amazing and has lots of potential.

You'll be seeing a lot more of her both here and possibly in some of my professional projects.

This is a technical exercise, still, so I am experimenting with the more subtle aspects of this kind of portraiture. One thing is getting the lighting effect you want, but another is catching just the right expression. Throw into that the more luck-based element of throwing the hair and getting just the right instant, and you are paying attention to a lot of specific things, but in a clear and useful way. So once I've got the angle of her body and face down (and have shown this to the model so the feedback can help her also figure out what's going on in the actual camera), what's left is expression and catching the hair at the right instant.

Again, this speaks also to the model's skill. Little things like remembering to keep one's eyes fixed on the lens while flipping the hair, in addition to keeping one's face relaxed while also giving the specific expression you want while doing the flip, is quite a hard thing to do. Seriously. A lot of models have major trouble keeping this together, but Shingoon picked it up and did it like a pro. Very impressive.

Also, one more thing. I hope she doesn't mind the unusual expression, but I doubt she will. After meeting her, I thought it kind of fit her personality, which is why I even thought to put this one in -- it's actually a crop of a full body shot, but I liked the way her face seems to condescend to you when you look at it.

Another aspect of this pose in these pictures is her stance -- I wanted her at an angle at which one might imagine you can see into her dress, which makes the feel of the image a bit more provocative or perhaps even intimate, but the important thing is that the shadow covers everything "naturally." The whole point of these pictures is that she's not showing much, but you feel like she is. Or perhaps she's actually showing a lot, but you don't feel it's too much. Either way, that's why Vogue can show you a picture of a nearly-naked lady riding a white horse with a headpiece made of thorns while wearing Prada heels or something, but it looks neither risque not ridiculous.

Or, in my case, I can put a picture of a topless girl wearing fishnet stockings and stiletto heels and no one freaks out, because when you desaturate into nearly black and white, do another layer in Overlay mode, and crop it just right, it looks "arty." Or, as is my goal, like a picture you might see in a fashion magazine.

I love the side shot, don't like how the dress covers everything so that it looks like potato sack, but then again, she's half taken it off. But I do like the expression and pose.

An alternate shot and testament to just how well Shingoon can keep her face natural and give a specific expression even as her head is flipping up from down by her knees. Try it sometime -- it's hard. She's GOOD.

Again, I love the look. I've found one of her strengths in this test shoot and it's in her intense looks, her eyes. Also, she has great hair and a great haircut, and after each head throw, her hair lands just right. It's awesome. It's the little things.

A crop of a shot just like the picture before this one. I wanted to eliminate the dress and concentrate on her body. Also, the shadow falls just right and slims her upper arm, which every girl can appreciate. It's the #1 thing I am asked to Photoshop, above pimples, scars, and birthmarks. The back of the upper arm. Shingoon's arms look fine, but I bet you a dollar she likes this picture, mostly because her arms look great, as much as her face.

A more naturalistic Photoshop job, one I like to do that naturally makes the skin look smoother in a sheeny kinda way, and also simulates the feel of black-and-white, but still has the slightest touch of color. I could go even further with the desaturation than most pictures because it IS essentially black-and-white already, as it alternates between black and white from her hair, face and arms, dress, skin from her thigh, then stockings, which themselves alternate between black-and-white because they are fishnets with lace tops.

Her "dress" is a skirt, by the way. Pulled up over her chest. Stockings were pulled out from a bag of them from a sale at H&M. We're keeping it real.

I like her 'tude here, and she sure knows how to work a skirt-we-used-as-a-dress to make it look good. It kind of reminds me of a hanbok (Korean traditional dress) in the way it basically hides the form as it balloons out from the chest down. I think I inherited that skirt from perhaps my ex-roommate Tasha?    

The Video Game "Homefront" Is the New "Yellow Peril?"

Really? This is a bit much.

The game, while its premise of North Korea invading and occupying the US is INDEED as silly as the Russkies coming for us in the 80's film Red Dawn, it is no more racist than that film was (wasn't), either. The choice of North Korea is no more mysterious than the fact that this is the CNN enemy of the hour, not out of some racist hatred of the Korean people. The fact that NK is even the enemy of choice, given how ridiculous the idea of NK attacking and occupying the US actually is, reflects just how little basis in reality this game is based.

And for as much history should come to light about the Korean War and American involvement there, the post-80's, Korean left-wing argument that America being in operational control of the military on the peninsula = full knowledge and responsibility for Korean military actions (including the Kwangju Massare) is as simplistic and problematic as saying the US bears NO responsibility for anything.

This is the same left wing historical argumentation that in the same breath castigates the US for NOT having inexplicably come to Korea's rescue when Japan took away Korea's sovereignty in 1910 (apparently, the Taft-Katsura memorandum is the smoking gun proving some secret American-Japanese conspiracy to sell out Korea, not the fact that the Japanese empire was far too powerful for even the US to trifle with, the US had no particular reason to enter into a battle with the entire Japanese empire over Korea, decades-old friendship Treaty or no, and the US was just happy to keep the Japanese out of the Phillipines, or that decades later, it would take the entire industrial and military might of a wartime US to even push the Japanese empire back out of the Pacific) but then at the same time complains that the US violated Korean sovereignty when it came to South Korea's aid during the Korean War.

And despite the geopolitical/commercial accident of the video game in question choosing the Norks as the enemy-du-jour, any secret histories of the US military's involvement in atrocities on the peninsula echoing the obviously ridiculous images of North Korean military regulars massacring American civvies in the streets constitutes at most some rhetorical irony, but in the end is a real stretch.

It's giving the video game makers much more credit than they deserve.

From what I know about the game, and from what I've seen, they're essentially the standard Call of Duty/Modern Warfare enemy, except intead of the enemy being a group of Russian ultranationalists who take over the missile silos and codes and launch a nuclear strike against the United States, invade Washington and our protagonists end up in firefights inside the White House and Capitol Building after the nuking of Virginia (riiiiiiiiight...), they've been watching a lot of CNN and have rendered green North Korean uniforms on the bad guys, probably cooked up some unlikely scenario of how North Koreans could occupy the continental US without nary a nuclear whimper, and are mowing down Americans in the streets.

But unless there are ongoing racist patterns of representation in the game, categorical racial demonization of Korean people in general, or anything of the sort, I'm not crying "wolf" on this one. Shooting a video game Russian ultranationalist doesn't make me hate Slavic peoples, the existing nation of Russia, or any people from former parts of the Soviet "Union." I didn't find that game "racist" nor, from anything I have seen from the game, is there anything to indicate that this equally silly backstory and premise involving North Korea is so, either.

The game's ridiculous premise reflects more a lack of imagination and ignorance of actual geopolitical possibility than some slight against the Korean people. And the alleged connection between the images of mass murder of Korean civilians (with the argument that since the American military is in technical control of the military, through the faulty assumption that there was active American knowledge and endorsement and even material support for all actions taken by the South Korean military, government, insurgent forces, and extremist military/political groups from 1950 to 1980, say) is a weak, rhetorical one at best, based more on the commercial accident that the enemy is supposedly really North Korea, rather than a bunch of video game sprites that happen to be drawn olive green and have a big red star on their hats and helmets.

I'm all for revealing the history of American involvement in secret military horror shows, the history of American empire, and all of the negative things the US has done, so that the truth be told and we don't do such things again. I've blogged about everything from My Lai to Abu Graib here, from the Native American Holocaust to the horrible decision to go to war in Iraq.

But this is the kind of limp-brained, knee-jerk, left wing argumentation that makes us smarter progressives look bad, and seeps our power away when REALLY important issues to fight against come up.

This article is WEAK SAUCE, dude.

Certain people need to go back to history and reboot the societal contexts that were active when white Californians were hanging "heathen Chinee" from the rafters or the government was rounding up Japanese Americans into concentration camps. Or even the inevitable-but-regrettable racialization of the Asian enemy that happened in the islands of the Pacific, or later on the Vietnamese penisula, which was a tragedy far less inevitable but degrees more regrettable.

This video game and fears of a nuclearized North Korea, in stark contrast to the US and the rest of the West enjoying Korean pop music, dramas, and movies, as well as close ties to its consumption-obssessed, capitalist star pupil, doesn't constitute allegations of being part of some new pattern of anti-Asian or even Korean racial sentiment, the vilification of an entire group of people, or any of that.

And the author needs to read up on what the "Yellow Peril" was argued to be, on a deeper cultural level, in terms of the degree of perceived threat and what brought that kind of nasty, pervasive ideology into existence. And I don't think American culture is anywhere close to the middle of that. Sure, some images from the game might be reminiscent of some scenes from the Korean War, and sure, the accident of the party in question being Korean might make it seem like there's some relationship beyond one with a mere rhetorical (and in the end, political) use.

But it just seems that way, and on a superficial level, at that.

As Freud didn't say, sometimes a dumb video game is just a dumb video game.

Actually, most of the time, that's the case.