The memory struggle: archives of postmemory in contemporary Korean photography

Abstract

This essay elucidates works of ‘the generation after’ Korean artists whose photographs reveal crevices of the modern and contemporary history of Korea. Using the medium of photography, Kwon Soon Kwan, Oh Suk Kuhn, An Jung Ju, Im Jong Jin, and Lim Anna look back and take issues with memories of then Korean War and the Gwangju Democratization Movement of May 18. I examine how their postmemory works visualize ghostly presences, dramas of anxiety, bodies as sites for trauma, and consumed and celebrated memories. I analyze ways in which they explore cultural, historical, and political transformations in collective memories based on Marian Hirsch’s theory of postmemory. Their works further pose questions on official records of the past traumatic events that were modified, edited, distorted, and even deleted for political purposes. I claim that, by giving the individual victims permanent presences, their photographic impulse is to recover what is no longer visible in society and history. Photographs in their work are places of lasting return that bring about ghosts that have disappeared in the archive. I argue that focused on the tension between national and individual memories, the artists’ imaginative horizon and creative appropriation recover specific local histories of the political violence embedded in oblivion.