Long-hidden images of post-war Korea
|  | Saturday, July 16, 2022 | | | | |
 | PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARIE ANN HAN YOO
| | By Heather Kim, associate photo editor
It started with a simple connection. I first heard of Marie Ann Han Yoo’s work through a Facebook group called Asian Creative Network.
Her daughter, Stephanie Han, had posted about her mother’s vivid breadth of photos featuring scenes of postwar Korea, all in color. The kicker? Yoo, now 85, was debuting as a photographer 65 years after these images were taken.
I was immediately intrigued, not only by the historical significance of these images, but also by the opportunity to witness Korea during this time through the eyes of a fellow Korean American woman. My grandparents could have witnessed these street scenes, such as these three finely dressed grandfathers (above).
How did these photos come to light more than six decades later? Yoo found a suitcase in Memphis when she was moving. Inside it were slides—her stunning (and rare) color images taken in 1956-57, in the aftermath of South Korea’s devastating and traumatic conflict with the North. (Below, a portrait of Yoo then, with her camera.)
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| Historians have praised her images as important renderings of the postwar period—and among the few taken then from a woman’s perspective. (Below, brightly colored buses stopping for passengers; farther down, vendors selling fabrics, produce, and dry noodles at Seoul’s chaotic Namdaemun market.)
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| The vivid colors and sharp facial expressions in Yoo’s images bring the lives of the people closer to us. You can feel their resilience.
Yoo, who spent most of her life as a homemaker, characterizes her work as travel photography. “I wanted to capture that particular moment in time,” she said.
Her daughter, however, doesn’t soft-pedal the power of her mom’s photographs. “There are a lot of strong reactions when people show these images to their families,” says Stephanie Han. “But it allows people to heal.”
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN LAM, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE/AP | | | |
 | PHOTOGRAPH BY LAURENT BALLESTA
| | ‘Be beautiful or be shocking’: These are typical tactics used to get people to care about nature, says photographer Laurent Ballesta. “I think there’s a third way,” he tells Nat Geo’s Amy McKeever for a story on horseshoe crabs that are thriving in protected maritime areas. “Try to show the mysteries. When you are in front of something you don’t understand, you forget beauty.”
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| Amid the alpacas: Peru is home to about four million alpacas, more than 70 percent of the world’s alpaca population, photographer Alessandro Cinque tells us. Peru’s alpaca herds produce around 7,600 tons of fleece yearly. We’ve written about Peru’s high-altitude hunt to save the animal’s habitat from climate change.
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 | | My dad had a hairdressing client who gave him an old 35mm Nikon. He gave it to me, and I started reading all these books on how to photograph. I was too shy to approach people, so I would photograph flowers and daisies. And the moon. | | | | Lynsey Addario | Photographer, Nat Geo Explorer
From: ‘A really long learning curve’ | | |
 | PHOTOGRAPH BY UNDERWOOD AND UNDERWOOD
| | Her pet deer: Our senior photo archivist, Sara Manco, is fascinated by an aspect of this image published in National Geographic in 1909, taken in the eastern Kenyan port of Mombasa. “I’m intrigued by the way she is holding the deer,” Manco tells us. The image of the woman was part of an article focused on the people and wildlife of eastern Africa. Manco says the photographers, brothers Bert Elias and Elmer Underwood, would start their own company selling stereographs, an early type of three-dimensional image.
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This newsletter has been curated and edited by David Beard, Jen Tse, and Monica Williams. Amanda Williams-Bryant, Alec Egamov, and Rita Spinks also contributed this week. Have a story idea or feedback? Drop us a line. Thanks for reading!
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