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| "Film Kiss with Protective Mask" (1937) / Courtesy of Imagno/Getty Images |
By Park Han-sol
Who would have guessed that a picture taken more than eight decades ago of an intimate kiss intervened by antiseptic masks ― an image that feels incredibly time-specific ― would resonate with audiences today?
"Film Kiss with Protective Mask," which depicts a movie kiss rehearsal between Hollywood actors Betty Furness and Stanley Morner during the 1937 flu epidemic, encapsulates, through the click of the shutter, the statement that history repeats itself.
It is one of 330 photographic works from Getty Images' massive digital archive that has been brought to a brick-and-mortar exhibition, "Connecting the World," for the first time in Korea at the Seoul Arts Center.
The featured photos, both displayed in the form of framed prints and digital art, present in their own ways the compelling role of images in "connecting" people of different generations, cultures and nationalities.
Some have played this role successfully by becoming historic icons of the 20th century.
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| "Albert Einstein Sticking Out His Tongue" (1951) / Courtesy of Bettmann/Getty Images |
On display is American photographer Arthur Sasse's "Albert Einstein Sticking Out His Tongue," an image of the Nobel-winning theoretical physicist that became forever seared into our collective memory.
On the night of his 72nd birthday on March 14, 1951, the world-famous scientist was walking back to his car, soon surrounded by a swarm of pesky, persistent reporters as usual.
"Professor, smile for your birthday picture, ya?" one shouted.
Out of weariness and annoyance, the eccentric professor quickly stuck his tongue out at them, thinking that the photographers couldn't possibly capture the cheeky gesture that lasted a mere second. Of course, we all know he was wrong.
In addition to presenting such monumental snapshots including "Migrant Mother" and "New York Construction Workers Lunching on a Crossbeam," the exhibition juxtaposes a series of photos taken from different eras to further visualize that history has and will continue to repeat itself.
Striking visual comparisons are made, for example, between the 1965 "Vietnamese Mother and Children Flee Village Bombing" and the 2017 "Rohingya Refugees Flee into Bangladesh to Escape Ethnic Cleansing."
Although the two images were taken more than five decades apart from each other and have been captured through the lenses of two different photographers, the subjects' harrowing journeys to escape unspeakable atrocities ― the 1955-75 Vietnam War and Myanmar's crackdown on Rohingya Muslims, respectively ― bear an uncanny resemblance.
But photographic snapshots of critically important moments in human history around the world are not limited to the past. They are part of the constant efforts made at this very moment, expanding further as photographers with more diverse backgrounds and perspectives are introduced to the scene day by day.
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| "Desperation Drives Women To Self Immolation In Herat" (2004) / Courtesy of Paula Bronstein/Getty Images |
One contemporary player that the exhibition highlights is Paula Bronstein, an award-winning photojournalist who has focused for years on documenting the ordinary lives in the context of the Afghanistan War.
One of her series of photos turned to the unusual phenomenon surrounding Afghan women ― specifically, a noticeable increase in the number of young wives who would set themselves on fire.
Eighteen-year-old Masooma in eastern Afghanistan, whose sky-blue burqa hides 70 percent of her severely burnt body, is one of many self-immolation victims who found such a painful attempt at suicide to be the only liberating element in their otherwise repressed lives.
Bronstein recounted that there was a whole ward designated to self-immolation victims at the hospital in the northwestern city of Herat.
"She is destroying herself so that no man really touches her again," she said in an interview with the South China Morning Post. Stuck in the endless cycle of poverty, childhood marriage or physical and psychological abuse, these women's desperation materializes into ultimate self-destruction.
With the Taliban having seized Afghanistan last year and seemingly signaling its turning back the clock on women's rights, her photos from the early 2000s ring differently once again.
"Connecting the World" runs through March 27 at the Hangaram Art Museum of the Seoul Arts Center.
