By Sunny Lee
Korea Times Correspondent
BEIJING ― "I could make any woman take off her clothes in two minutes," said Lee Jae-gil with gusto.
Don't get him wrong. It's not what you might think. Besides, that was some 25 years ago. At the time, Lee was South Korea's most famous and yet also most controversial photographer. He took pictures of naked women and called it "art." It was quite a foreign, and also unacceptable, concept in a conservative Confucian society.
"During the 1980s, the Korean society was not ready to accept nude photos," said Lee, now a professor of photography at Keimyung University in the southeastern city of Daegu.
When Lee published a book of nude photos, literary giants such as Choi Yin-ho, who recognized Lee's genius, volunteered to write the preface, hoping that their reputations and influence might shield Lee from criticism.
Lee was born in 1951 into a rich family. When he was in middle school, his father bought him a camera. He made some pocket money by taking pictures of his classmates because he was the only student in school who owned a camera.
His obsession with cameras deepened. Photography became his passion. He held a solo exhibition when he was just a high school student. In his 30's, Lee was already at the height of his fame ― wealthy as well as controversial. But the problem at that time was finding female models willing to pose nude in the conservative society.
For Lee, that didn't prove to be much of a hurdle. He ran a commercial photo studio. Lee had the Midas touch. Beautiful female models whose pictures Lee took instantly became cover girls for national magazines and TV actresses. Girls knew that Lee was a shortcut to stardom.
Young women lined up to become his models. They often had to compete to get Lee's attention. Lee then told them to take off their clothes, which they did after a "two-minute hesitance." It was, in a sense, a symbiotic relationship in which the girls wanted to use Lee, and Lee also wanted to use them.
In the conservative Korean society at that time, Lee wasn't able to publish a nude photo book. When Lee published a collection in Japan, it became an instant bestseller, selling 200,000 copies. It was banned in Korea. But some copies were smuggled into the country, creating huge social repercussions because many of the naked models were already popular TV celebrities. Lee's models even included a Miss Korea, he said.
"People blamed me for 'cheating' innocent actresses into becoming porn stars," Lee recollects.
The family members of the nude models were especially enraged and lodged a strong protest. Lee fled. He went into hiding overseas for months.
Lee believes that the debacle was, fundamentally, because of people's general lack of understanding and appreciation for nude pictures as a legitimate form of art.
"Nudes do not automatically translate into porn," he said. "It is not just the artist's task to persuade the general public; the general public should also develop a healthy attitude to appreciate nude pictures from an aesthetic perspective."
The 1980s in Korea were also a period when landscapes represented the artistic mainstream in photography. Adding a human figure into the scene was considered artistic treason. "Adding a woman into a scene was even more frowned upon," said Lee. "From that, you could guess the women's status in the Korean society at that time."
Lee had his share of supporters. Kim Woo-choong, the former Daewoo conglomerate chief, was one of them. According to Lee, Kim purchased many of Lee's nude pictures, which eventually were hung on the walls of the company's overseas branch offices.
But people's misunderstanding persisted. Lee left Korea.
Lee went to New York broken-hearted and speaking little English. But people didn't have to hear him speak to judge him. They just saw Lee's photographs and immediately recognized his genius.
In New York, his nude pictures were no longer considered pornography, but were praised as high-end art. Philip Perkis, Lee's mentor at the Pratt Institute in New York, described Lee as an artist who succeeded in distilling "Asian sensuality" through his photographs, in a preface to Lee's photo gallery "Dream and Fantasia."
Ironically, as Lee's fame grew overseas, the Korean society started to rethink their attitude toward his work. Later, Lee returned home to a hero's welcome and was given a professorship, which he holds to this day.
Lee recently held a joint exhibition in Beijing with a Chinese artist. If Lee was the one who pioneered nude photography in Korea at a time when it was not acceptable by society, the Chinese artist, Chen Jiagang, is a rebel in his own right as well.
Chen, a former architect, businessman, and art collector, has something in common with Lee: women.
Unlike Lee's, however, Chen's subjects were all dressed up. But his photographs are very rich with embedded with symbolism. For example, all the women wear "qipao" ― a traditional Chinese dress, also known in English as a cheongsam ― with the 1960s as the background. The photographs don't match historical facts. All the Chinese people during the 1960s wore charcoal-grey suits.
The women were portrayed in remote scenic places, such as deserts. There is no explanation on why these beautiful ladies are there. People are not immediately clear about the artist's intentions.
"Power, politics and women are central to my artistic works," said Chen.
Chen, born in 1962, grew up in a period when China was relocating its heavy industrial bases and military factories from northeastern provinces to inner lands, including Chens' native Sichuan, when its relationship with its ideological ally, the Soviet Union, had soured and China felt it would be safer to have those key industries in central regions.
The industrial boom in what used to be rural areas began to generate different wealth classes. As a young boy, Chen witnessed that "when a man became rich, one of the first things he did was to get a new woman."
Chen later found something similar happening to corrupt local government officials. When they became rich and powerful, they were seen with a new, beautiful woman. "If you look at my photographs, many of them are taken in remote scenic places. These are the places where these rich men travel with their lovers. It's safe because you're away from your family. They take pictures there. That's what my works express," Chen said.
The images of qipao-clad women also have embedded meanings. Later, when China embarked on economic reforms in the eastern coastal regions in 1978, these inner industrial regions were abandoned again, leaving a specter of industrialization. The central regions were also omitted from the nation's modernization drive, and they came to contrast with the times, just like the women wearing anachronistic clothes.
Without Chen's decoding, it's not easy to understand his photos. "Politicians are stupid. They don't understand the meaning embedded in my photographs," Chen said.
Lee and Chen, rebel artists in different countries, both defy social norms and push the boundary of what they can express. But they have one more thing in common. They are both rich, which enables them to focus on their artistic works without distraction.
Lee thinks this financial independence is very important for an artist. "I tell my students to make money first. The age of hungry artists is over. When you're financially stable, you can pursue the kind of artistic idealism that your conscience tells you to, rather than having to do something to ingratiate your sponsors."