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In 1952 Joe Savitzky was a U.S. Army engineer deployed to Seoul. His mission, as the Korean War was winding down, was to begin rebuilding South Korea. For two years he built schools, government facilities and railroad lines, in his spare time taking snapshots of the Korean landscape and people. At an evening program at The Korea Society, Savitzky shared his pictures of a bygone moment in Korean history.

“At that point, the situation was quite static,” Savitzky recalled of the conflict’s stalemate phase in 1953, “There weren’t great movements of armies up and down the Peninsula. Even in Seoul. Things were quiet.” Indeed, for such a generally devastating period, Savitzky’s photographs convey as sense of bewildered peacefulness.

Shots taken in the countryside outside Seoul suggest a timeless, unchanging scene: wooden Buddhist temples, farmers bringing in the rice harvest and placid rivers. Shots taken in Seoul communicate a more dynamic mood. They show high school students protesting the division of the Peninsula and bustling cattle markets. As Savitzky cycled through his slides, reflecting on Seoul’s limited indoor plumbing and musing on the origins of various landmarks, audience members actively joined in the process of remembering. Fellow veterans and others who had been to Korea struggled to recall the exact locations of pictured buildings and shared their own recollections of the city.

Scenes of devastation and desperation were included. But Savitzky’s collection, like his subject, did not dwell on them. Some of his most careful compositions are of traditional Korean architecture and old Seoul neighborhoods that, in the decades to come, would be cleared to make way for new high rises.

The last photo in Savitzky’s collection could serve as a prescient visual metaphor of Korea at the end of the war. In it, a young Korean laborer is carrying what appears to be an improbably large bale of hay. He bears the load with patient confidence that he will soon reach his destination.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

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