There was another image in the third position when I made the comment early this am. The same woman and the same spot--but there was a man in the earlier image. This image is lovely--but I was intrigued by the first one. I don't believe you crop your images--so i think this is not the same image.
I love all three....for me 1 and 2 are the "best" (i hate this fucking word);))...
blue-dream 3 is (for me) classic Harvey: darkshadow, erotic sadness, underwaterdream blue, hunger and yearning, distance: color of space: that is you, for me, and isn't necessarily about korea...but....
let me chime in, since i have some experience with Koreans...i've been working with and photographing and teaching and becoming friends with Korean students for almost 5 years, and they are at the center of my project on students who travel to study...and david's three pictures, are in fact, profoundly observant about korean students, particularly women...korean society falls, at a terrible price, physical beauty...so much so that every korean student has a photo that has been photoshopped, brushworked, enhance so much that they never look like themselves: all job applicants must submit photographs and koreans consider appearance to be as important as grades. More importantly, most korean women, in particular, find themselves not beautiful or too fat even and the obsession with self and face is extraordinay: look at the number of selfportraits on cyworld and you'll quickly understand..."beauty" is inculcated in them in such an extraordinary and wounding way that the narcissism inflicted becomes a blinding identity:...there is rarely a young korean woman who thinks of their appearance casually...its a pressure that is hard to convey to people not familiar with the psyche landscape or the pressure that all koreans endure when they are young...there is nothing like it in the west....
all three images, to me, especially the 1st 2, reveal to me this difficult and painful struggle: the hidden and the need to examine, to obsess over their faces and eyes and to still bank off what is not really there...they seldom really are able to see what they look like and they continue to dig deeper: more photos, more mirrors, more clothing, more makeup, more websites...most korean women think they are fat and think that the "average korean girl" weights 42 kilos, even though reality does not bare this out....
what i mean to suggest is this: david's photographs, yes are beautiful and tender and sad and (aesthetically) very interesting, but more important they are truthful, in the sense of his observations about how many many young korean women perceive and struggle with their perceptions of themselves....
imagine if your job interview was dependent on what your photograph looked like accompanying your CV??...check out Cyworld and notice the indundation of pics of faces, girls taking, obsessively, pics, trying to get toward the "perfect" or "beautiful" face....1-2-3 all images, for different reasons, resonate with 3 of the most extraordinary and sad aspects of that experience....
loneliness, isolation and longing...and david has captured that in each of the pictures...
The shots look great David, and I see where you are going with this, though I must ask, is #3 going to be used instead of the one of her with her hair hanging down?
These photographs and comments regarding Korean youth culture are particularly sad yet relevant to me in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre. We are one world though, and much that Bob Black said seems to "fit" American girls also. Time for me to get to work--I've said too much.
i have three "blue" pictures...all shot at the same time of the same woman in the stairwell of a club....still trying to decide....what i would do at home is print all three and thumbtack them to the wall and think about it for awhile...cannot do that here...maybe i will post the other one too and see how they look together...
one of my next books "you made me leave" is a series of my "portraits" of women....and i wrote a little novella (sad love story) for the text....all of us reveal ourselves with our photographs....bob's clear and poetic explanation of the "state of being" for Korean women is right on....so what i try to do in an essay like this is to be sensitive to the culture and "represent" (william james) and at the same time the work is also reflective of whatever i am thinking too....another collaboration???
just a quick, addition then i have to run. What Rosemary has written is particularly apt. More then ever we are plaque by a gluttony of obsession toward appearance; not so much about "appearance" (that's the nature of our species: we're defined by sight and we often need to "understand" life through images (in the beginning was not the word, but light and before word were pictures ;)) )...but, it is particular to note about the specific infliction that plaques Korean culture, particularly women there.
In the N.america/Europe, surely we're as battled. But, in Korea a job applicant, for example, MUST submit a photograph and those photographs decide, first, the line of entry into an interview. More importantly, as with many young women (and men) throughout the world, particularly the developed world, Korean women are often taught and drummed into the belief that they are not beautiful enough, their eyes not round enough, the legs and waists not thin enough, but this does not come born simply through idol worship or films or teen magazines/models (that too, of course) but by something else. It is rare that a young korean women feels comfortable in casual clothes or has a casual awareness. It's extraordinary when one knows many personally and over time. It's been a heartbreaking 5 years, really becoming friends and a mentor and a teacher. Part of it is the enormous societal pressure placed on "appearance": not only "beauty" but also measurement: grades. Even the brightest of the young women (and im talking about students of mine who were enrolled in Seoul University (the harvard of Korea)) who were still taught and still felt that they had to be "beautiful" to be successful: meaning: to find a future husband. What has always struck me about my korean students (men and women) is how low generally their self-esteem, particularly since they are also, generally speaking, incredibly hard working, diligent, kind and circumspect. Many of these challenges are not alone to Korean society (i have a 13 year old son who's facing these issues too). But there is something keenly specific about the young men and women there, and in particular, the struggle for affirmation that young women feel. ....
it's heart breaking really....and I was really struck by the power and insight of David's powerful and heart-rending photographs. Like i said, i know only from having spent the last 5 years developing relationships, as a teacher, friend, "sibling", to many korean students.
for me, photography (this kind of photography) is about that: the moment of insight, often born in a moment of gesture: one who listens first and sees later...
it is what i cherish about the above pics...waiting for more...:)))
now i am the one running....with not much time to add/respond to your incisive comment....
but one thing totally struck me on my first day here when i was talking to my male students in my pre-shooting days workshop....
the boys wanted to teach me a few words of korean...and i noted, in separated conversations with different groups of boys, that the first thing they wanted to teach me to say was "you are pretty"...
I saw an article in a photography magazine about "You Made Me Leave" (Shuttebug? Not sure...) Seemed quite an interesting concept then as it seems now reading your description. Look forward to seeing it.
Regading "another collaboration"... CG Yung's "synchronicity" (whether we believe in mystical, temporal, and causal connections, or in the power of the unconscious as our guide, or else) comes to mind as an appropriate association with your thought. There are no coincidences...
As I said... very interesting and poignant notes on Korean culture. Some days I think we're headed in the same direction if we're not there already... Plastic surgery is at almost Walmart prices in LA... our obsession with celebrity, the flood of beauty products and related imagery, eating disorders among teens... All this reminds me of Lauren Greenfield's wonderful work centered around many aspects of our image/shape/celebrity consumption culture...
In closing, this conversation made me think of Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" and about how conscious/unconscious even we are about image-based biases.
yes, that's the said state indeed. ...walmart as one-shop-stopping, including a little nip-n-tuck too ;))...sometimes i wonder and worry about the life for my son and their future....lauren's work is wonderful and heartbreaking...and i'm not familiar with "Blink", but am now running to find out some info :)))
Hey "Nip/Tuck" is even a TV show in the States! :) But I know what you're saying about kids, and concerns for their future... I have a daughter and have my good share of fears for her, whether she will make good choices... but that's another story. :)
The 1st image above is really psychological in an intriguing kind of way.a sense of longing;reflection..ie..quietcontemplation for me i like the upper left quadrant in juxtaposition with the lower
right part of the square; analogous colors.. well done; David
yes; this one and the boy//girl shot i think is the contenders..
following the "logic" of your first two photographs (hence, the "logic" of your edit), i pick the first seoul_hair.
in your first two photographs, both korean women have their faces hidden and both photos convey a sense of being isolated/separated from the other objects in photograph. in the first seoul_hair, the woman's face, like the others, is also obscured, and the stairwell leading to darkness repeats the sense of being blocked off from another place.
For me Seoul search would be found in the last image of this series.
Posted by: Rosemary | August 28, 2007 at 01:07 AM
Cool! Like them all, David, especially 1 and 3. Interestingly, in all 3, the subjects are women... coincidence?
Can't wait to see more.
Thanks for sharing,
Giancarlo
Posted by: Giancarlo A. Mori | August 28, 2007 at 11:17 AM
To me, it's the first picture that has it... so mysterious...
All the best !
Pierre-Yves
Posted by: pierre yves racine | August 28, 2007 at 11:18 AM
There was another image in the third position when I made the comment early this am. The same woman and the same spot--but there was a man in the earlier image. This image is lovely--but I was intrigued by the first one. I don't believe you crop your images--so i think this is not the same image.
Posted by: Rosemary | August 28, 2007 at 01:18 PM
David :)))
I love all three....for me 1 and 2 are the "best" (i hate this fucking word);))...
blue-dream 3 is (for me) classic Harvey: darkshadow, erotic sadness, underwaterdream blue, hunger and yearning, distance: color of space: that is you, for me, and isn't necessarily about korea...but....
let me chime in, since i have some experience with Koreans...i've been working with and photographing and teaching and becoming friends with Korean students for almost 5 years, and they are at the center of my project on students who travel to study...and david's three pictures, are in fact, profoundly observant about korean students, particularly women...korean society falls, at a terrible price, physical beauty...so much so that every korean student has a photo that has been photoshopped, brushworked, enhance so much that they never look like themselves: all job applicants must submit photographs and koreans consider appearance to be as important as grades. More importantly, most korean women, in particular, find themselves not beautiful or too fat even and the obsession with self and face is extraordinay: look at the number of selfportraits on cyworld and you'll quickly understand..."beauty" is inculcated in them in such an extraordinary and wounding way that the narcissism inflicted becomes a blinding identity:...there is rarely a young korean woman who thinks of their appearance casually...its a pressure that is hard to convey to people not familiar with the psyche landscape or the pressure that all koreans endure when they are young...there is nothing like it in the west....
all three images, to me, especially the 1st 2, reveal to me this difficult and painful struggle: the hidden and the need to examine, to obsess over their faces and eyes and to still bank off what is not really there...they seldom really are able to see what they look like and they continue to dig deeper: more photos, more mirrors, more clothing, more makeup, more websites...most korean women think they are fat and think that the "average korean girl" weights 42 kilos, even though reality does not bare this out....
what i mean to suggest is this: david's photographs, yes are beautiful and tender and sad and (aesthetically) very interesting, but more important they are truthful, in the sense of his observations about how many many young korean women perceive and struggle with their perceptions of themselves....
imagine if your job interview was dependent on what your photograph looked like accompanying your CV??...check out Cyworld and notice the indundation of pics of faces, girls taking, obsessively, pics, trying to get toward the "perfect" or "beautiful" face....1-2-3 all images, for different reasons, resonate with 3 of the most extraordinary and sad aspects of that experience....
loneliness, isolation and longing...and david has captured that in each of the pictures...
trois coleur....
cheers,
bob
Posted by: bobblack | August 28, 2007 at 03:22 PM
p.s. david, i cant wait to see the series....
bob
Posted by: bobblack | August 28, 2007 at 03:23 PM
Looking great. I think you "got it."
Posted by: cathy scholl | August 28, 2007 at 04:46 PM
The shots look great David, and I see where you are going with this, though I must ask, is #3 going to be used instead of the one of her with her hair hanging down?
Posted by: Rafal Pruszynski | August 28, 2007 at 07:43 PM
I meant the one with her face hidden, the one you showed me on your LCD ..
Posted by: Rafal Pruszynski | August 28, 2007 at 07:46 PM
Hey Bob,
Good stuff about Korean culture.
Giancarlo
Posted by: Giancarlo A. Mori | August 28, 2007 at 08:47 PM
David: U play the violin beautifully !!
Bob: thank you for insights into the korean culture that many of us here in the West may not be privy too. interesting observations for sure..
Posted by: robert | August 28, 2007 at 08:57 PM
These photographs and comments regarding Korean youth culture are particularly sad yet relevant to me in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre. We are one world though, and much that Bob Black said seems to "fit" American girls also. Time for me to get to work--I've said too much.
Posted by: Rosemary | August 28, 2007 at 10:10 PM
rafal and rosemary...
i have three "blue" pictures...all shot at the same time of the same woman in the stairwell of a club....still trying to decide....what i would do at home is print all three and thumbtack them to the wall and think about it for awhile...cannot do that here...maybe i will post the other one too and see how they look together...
Posted by: david alan harvey | August 28, 2007 at 10:19 PM
giancarlo....
one of my next books "you made me leave" is a series of my "portraits" of women....and i wrote a little novella (sad love story) for the text....all of us reveal ourselves with our photographs....bob's clear and poetic explanation of the "state of being" for Korean women is right on....so what i try to do in an essay like this is to be sensitive to the culture and "represent" (william james) and at the same time the work is also reflective of whatever i am thinking too....another collaboration???
Posted by: david alan harvey | August 28, 2007 at 10:25 PM
just a quick, addition then i have to run. What Rosemary has written is particularly apt. More then ever we are plaque by a gluttony of obsession toward appearance; not so much about "appearance" (that's the nature of our species: we're defined by sight and we often need to "understand" life through images (in the beginning was not the word, but light and before word were pictures ;)) )...but, it is particular to note about the specific infliction that plaques Korean culture, particularly women there.
In the N.america/Europe, surely we're as battled. But, in Korea a job applicant, for example, MUST submit a photograph and those photographs decide, first, the line of entry into an interview. More importantly, as with many young women (and men) throughout the world, particularly the developed world, Korean women are often taught and drummed into the belief that they are not beautiful enough, their eyes not round enough, the legs and waists not thin enough, but this does not come born simply through idol worship or films or teen magazines/models (that too, of course) but by something else. It is rare that a young korean women feels comfortable in casual clothes or has a casual awareness. It's extraordinary when one knows many personally and over time. It's been a heartbreaking 5 years, really becoming friends and a mentor and a teacher. Part of it is the enormous societal pressure placed on "appearance": not only "beauty" but also measurement: grades. Even the brightest of the young women (and im talking about students of mine who were enrolled in Seoul University (the harvard of Korea)) who were still taught and still felt that they had to be "beautiful" to be successful: meaning: to find a future husband. What has always struck me about my korean students (men and women) is how low generally their self-esteem, particularly since they are also, generally speaking, incredibly hard working, diligent, kind and circumspect. Many of these challenges are not alone to Korean society (i have a 13 year old son who's facing these issues too). But there is something keenly specific about the young men and women there, and in particular, the struggle for affirmation that young women feel. ....
it's heart breaking really....and I was really struck by the power and insight of David's powerful and heart-rending photographs. Like i said, i know only from having spent the last 5 years developing relationships, as a teacher, friend, "sibling", to many korean students.
for me, photography (this kind of photography) is about that: the moment of insight, often born in a moment of gesture: one who listens first and sees later...
it is what i cherish about the above pics...waiting for more...:)))
as Rosemary said, I too have said too much :))
cheers,
b
Posted by: bobblack | August 28, 2007 at 10:31 PM
bob....
now i am the one running....with not much time to add/respond to your incisive comment....
but one thing totally struck me on my first day here when i was talking to my male students in my pre-shooting days workshop....
the boys wanted to teach me a few words of korean...and i noted, in separated conversations with different groups of boys, that the first thing they wanted to teach me to say was "you are pretty"...
Posted by: david alan harvey | August 28, 2007 at 10:32 PM
david: EXACTLY!!!!....
that's it!!!....
ok, off to call mrs. black in moscow...cant wait to see the other blue-stairs...and pics :)))
hugs,
b
Posted by: bobblack | August 28, 2007 at 10:38 PM
David,
I saw an article in a photography magazine about "You Made Me Leave" (Shuttebug? Not sure...) Seemed quite an interesting concept then as it seems now reading your description. Look forward to seeing it.
Regading "another collaboration"... CG Yung's "synchronicity" (whether we believe in mystical, temporal, and causal connections, or in the power of the unconscious as our guide, or else) comes to mind as an appropriate association with your thought. There are no coincidences...
Have a good flight back.
Giancarlo
Posted by: Giancarlo A. Mori | August 29, 2007 at 01:10 AM
Bob,
As I said... very interesting and poignant notes on Korean culture. Some days I think we're headed in the same direction if we're not there already... Plastic surgery is at almost Walmart prices in LA... our obsession with celebrity, the flood of beauty products and related imagery, eating disorders among teens... All this reminds me of Lauren Greenfield's wonderful work centered around many aspects of our image/shape/celebrity consumption culture...
In closing, this conversation made me think of Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" and about how conscious/unconscious even we are about image-based biases.
Good reading!
Giancarlo
Posted by: Giancarlo A. Mori | August 29, 2007 at 01:28 AM
Giancarlo! :))
yes, that's the said state indeed. ...walmart as one-shop-stopping, including a little nip-n-tuck too ;))...sometimes i wonder and worry about the life for my son and their future....lauren's work is wonderful and heartbreaking...and i'm not familiar with "Blink", but am now running to find out some info :)))
cheers Giancarlo...
all the best
bob
Posted by: bobblack | August 29, 2007 at 08:10 AM
Bob,
Hey "Nip/Tuck" is even a TV show in the States! :) But I know what you're saying about kids, and concerns for their future... I have a daughter and have my good share of fears for her, whether she will make good choices... but that's another story. :)
As for Blink, do check: http://www.gladwell.com/blink/ , and especially this excerpt: http://www.gladwell.com/blink/blink_excerpt2.html , by the awesome title of "Why do we love tall men?" I think you'll find it interesting.
Take care! :)
Giancarlo
Posted by: Giancarlo A. Mori | August 29, 2007 at 12:06 PM
David,
I like 1 and 3 as well... There is more emotional depth to them... Thats what i feel and see...
Mike
Posted by: Mike Berube | August 29, 2007 at 09:15 PM
The 1st image above is really psychological in an intriguing kind of way.a sense of longing;reflection..ie..quietcontemplation for me i like the upper left quadrant in juxtaposition with the lower
right part of the square; analogous colors.. well done; David
yes; this one and the boy//girl shot i think is the contenders..
Posted by: robert | August 29, 2007 at 10:22 PM
david,
following the "logic" of your first two photographs (hence, the "logic" of your edit), i pick the first seoul_hair.
in your first two photographs, both korean women have their faces hidden and both photos convey a sense of being isolated/separated from the other objects in photograph. in the first seoul_hair, the woman's face, like the others, is also obscured, and the stairwell leading to darkness repeats the sense of being blocked off from another place.
your turn.
jeryc
Posted by: Jeryc Garcia | August 29, 2007 at 11:06 PM
Seoul_hair_2...definitely!
Posted by: Jeff James | August 30, 2007 at 02:46 PM
Seoul_hair. I love the lines leading to her, the dark above, where she's at in the frame, and the mystery. Makes me want to see more, to know more.
Posted by: Joan | September 02, 2007 at 06:25 PM