When the Archive Becomes a Movement

The History of Women in Korean Photography I exhibition, held at SeMA, Buk-Seoul Museum of Art, in Seoul, South Korea, from June 29 to September 26, 2021, sheds light on an overlooked history of Korean female photographers from the 1900s to the 1980s. The first section of the exhibition chronicles the emergence of female photographers at the dawn of the twentieth century through a timeline featuring women and a shelf with archival materials covering their works. The second section focuses on ten female photographers active during the 1980s. Although their activities were a part of a larger cultural “movement” of the era, the exhibited photographs suggest multiple readings of the term movement. The female photographers moved beyond the boundary of their nation by traveling abroad to expand their approaches to photography. Upon returning to Korea, they became part of a movement reconceptualizing postmodern photography. Lastly, the exhibition itself was a result of a curatorial movement, one which renders the categories of what can and cannot be reflected in histories of art malleable.