Painting a Different Picture: Reimagining Painting through Photography in Early Twentieth Century Korea
Creators: name: Chang, Haely
Publisher: name: My University
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Photography and Painting
subject: Early Twentieth Century Korea
subject: Kim Kyujin
subject: Ch'ae Yongsin
subject: Na Hyesŏk
subject: Tokuda Tomijirō and Tokuda Kyokuryū
subject: Art and Design
subject: Art History
subject: East Asian Languages and Cultures
subject: History (General)
subject: Humanities (General)
subject: Arts
subject: Humanities
subject: FOS: Humanities

description: Painting a Different Picture examines the interaction between photography and painting in early twentieth-century Korea. It focuses on three Korean artists and one Japanese artist duo who produced ink and oil paintings amidst the influx of photography. This study examines how photography marked more than a technological shift for the painters, as it reinvigorated approaches to the formality, viewership, and circulation of paintings. This dissertation examines the period from 1901 to 1948 when photography occupied a liminal status between technology and art. While photography was no longer perceived as a technical novelty, it had not yet attained recognition as an art form with its own aesthetic grounding. Nevertheless, photography permeated vernacular culture through newspapers, photo studios, and portable cameras. In everyday lived experiences, photography consolidated its position as a discourse—a forum that facilitated the exchange of information and opened up spaces for participants to imagine new approaches towards how images could be created, circulated, and traded. For the painters in this visual landscape, photography and painting were divided not by material division but by a social and artistic hierarchy, situating painting as a spiritual, intellectual, and historical entity, while positioning photography as a heuristic tool. This hierarchy encouraged painters to negotiate which aspects of photography to accept or reject, while clarifying the unique materiality and value embedded in painting that could not be replaced by photography. I argue that the artists utilized this intermediary negotiation to reexamine their paintings, made necessary by the shifting consumer base, the rapidly changing art market, and new categorizations of art in early twentieth-century Korea. Chapter 2 analyzes stylistic transitions within Kim Kyujin’s ink bamboo which were shaped by his career as a photographer. His experience running a photo studio reshaped his conception of both the audience and market for art. Once a medium of private appreciation limited to literati, the publicity intrinsic to consumer demand for photography encouraged formal innovations in his painting. By embracing larger scale ink bamboo and publicizing the labor inherent in painting, Kim’s style developed in response to his expanding customer base. Chapter 3 delves into Ch’ae Yongsin’s selective adaptation of photography in his portraits, incorporating photographic realism within the format of traditional ritual paintings. Ch’ae negotiated between both visual approaches to create portraits which served as a vehicle for self-representation, while maintaining their spiritual value within ritual practices. Chapter 4 offers a new interpretation of Na Hyesŏk’s enigmatic portrait by contextualizing it within her practice of compiling a photo album. Na’s album provides insight into how photography reshaped her perception of time and visualization of social relationships. By positioning Na’s album as a methodological prism, this chapter reinterprets her mysterious portrait of a female figure from a historically situated person to an emblem of a timeless, aspirational identification with global New Women. Chapter 5 considers the work of Tokuda Kyokuryū and Tokuda Tomijirō, Japanese expatriate artists who depicted Mt. Kŭmgang. Tomijirō carefully edited his photographs of the mountains to provide a comprehensive view in his series of albums. Meanwhile, Kyokuryū expanded upon Tomijirō’s photographs to reimagine the mountains’ expansive landscape in ink. This chapter analyzes how Tokuda brothers’ engagement with photography cultivated their sense of attachment to the mountains, driven by their desire to find a place of belonging beyond national boundaries.