Old Spaces, A Time for Recollection

Sunmin Lee

The project <From the Father's Times> is a portrait of older generation of men who have devoted numerous years into their line of work. The men featured in the photos are those who have lived through some difficult periods of modern Korean history as alchemists and fathers. This is why <From the Father's Times> project is not only a portrait of the older generation who have witnessed the country's turbulent past, but also a way to remember their skills and the values they hold through their own narrative.

The project took off through the working title <The Alchemists> in 2015. With digitalization and mechanization quickly taking over and changing the society, I wanted to meet the skilled alchemists who were unaffected by the new shift in society and still put in long hours to perfect their skillsets. I also wished to hear their stories. Like a pilgrim who goes to the wise man to ask questions, I too wanted to see for myself what they were working on and listen to the values they were holding onto and their life's journey. I went into this not knowing what kind of questions to ask, nor what kind of answers to expect. I vaguely saw this as an opportunity to converse with the older generation and ask them questions that I longed to know the answers to in their old workspace.

The first model I met was Mr. Gyeongju Lee, a tailor and owner of a tailor shop that had been run by his family for three-generations. Like the shop's name 'Jong-no Tailor Shop,' the store was located in Jong-no. When I first visited the tailor shop, the first thing that caught my eyes was not the suits that were hanging up, but the pictures of the owner's father and grandfather. After the photoshoot, Mr. Lee shared some of his past with me in an interview. He started off by saying that he had been making suits for 50 years and was taught by his father. The only thing he took with him when he first left home was a sign that had 'Jong-no Tailor Shop' written on it. For him, having the skillsets to make suits was the only thing that he inherited from his parents and the only way to make ends meet. After hearing this story, I thought that he may have had a stronger sense of responsibility towards being a father than inheriting his family shop. I could also feel the pressure he had to endure in his words. Another interesting part of the interview was when he told me that his grandfather had learned how to tailor suits by attending a tailoring school in Japan while his father acquired his tailoring skills by working for a famous Japanese tailor shop in Manchuria. As a result, Mr. Lee was born in Manchuria, but after Korea's liberation, his father moved the family to Seoul to run the Jong-no Tailor Shop that was originally run by his father before him. Even before Mr. Lee was born, Mr. Lee's grandfather and father had risked migrating from Japan to Manchuria to learn the skillsets to support their family and start a business due to historical events. The chronicles of Jong-no Tailor Shop was the reason behind the changing of the working title of <The Alchemists> to <From the Father's Time>. When we first started the interview, I had asked him when he was born and he introduced himself as a 'Liberation Baby,'' someone who was born in 1945, the year of Korea's liberation. Underneath his life as an ordinary tailor, he had undergone a rough period in Korean history and had to move around 10 times even after he got married. However, he always carried the shop's sign 'Jong-no Tailor Shop' with him, showing how much weight these three words held in his life.

The men featured in this project were all born from the years 1930s to 1950s. Most of them were born during the time of Korea's liberation from Japan and directly experienced the Korean War at a young age. By the time these men found a steady job and settled down to raise a family, they were faced with the turbulent political periods of the 60s and 70s. This generation of men witnessed periods of history that the young generation today can only see in textbooks. This may be why even though many years have passed, the men can still recall vivid memories of the war, poverty and migration.

The oldest model in this project was Mr. Wonha Kim, a 88 year-old who was born in 1932. He was fourteen in Japan when Korea was liberated and managed to go back to his home in Pohang. At eighteen, the Korean War had begun, and due to a plane bombing, his family's factories all burned down, forcing them to evacuate to Gyeongju. As the eldest son of six children, he was the only one who was able to get a college education. After choosing to study medicine to support his family, he moved to Seoul and worked for Cheil Perfumery Company and Chongkundang Pharmaceutical Company. He later opened his own pharmacy in Hwanghak-dong and has been running it for the past 45 years. When he first started working in Seoul at the age of thirty, he had to witness the April 19 Revolution and military coup of the 1960s. He also had to live through the Yushin regime and the assassination of President Park in the 1970s, another military coup in December 12, 1979, and the Gwangju Uprising, the fight for democracy, and the change to a direct presidential election system in the 1980s. When asked at which point in life he had felt the most devastated, Mr. Kim answered the time in middle school when his house was bombed during the Korean War, which led his family to barely hang onto a running train and evacuate and when he had to live in someone else's house and tutor other students to support his family in high school. Mr. Lee, the owner of Jong-no Tailor Shop had also replied that the memory of his family fleeing for shelter during the Korean War was the most striking to him. He added that even though he was only 5 years old at the time, it was such a shocking incident that he still had a vivid memory of it. For the older generation that took part in this project, war, poverty, and migration were common keywords that came up that reminded them of the most difficult times in their lives and as pressing issues that they desperately wanted to resolve.

My late father, who passed away around 10 years ago, was born in 1935, similar to the men mentioned above. Like the men featured in the project <From the Father's Times>, my father underwent the war, faced poverty and came to Seoul alone from Busan to make a living. Like mentioned above, memories of the war, poverty, and migration became a common theme for the models in this project. Working on this project took me back to my first project <A Woman's House>, which I worked on from 1999 to 2004. The photos taken show how the different generations feel somewhat distant from each other when they gathered during the holidays. After working on this project did I finally understand why there was such a distance. This generation of men had spent all their time and energy to overcome the difficult times to make a living and support their families. I was able to acknowledge how rough their life's journey was when they said that they were not able to afford the time to enjoy a hobby or to just stop and take a look around.

<From the Father's Times> project casts light on the works and values that the older generation have lived by and the periods in history that they underwent. The photos portray the decades old workplace with the men there, looking like they have been a part of the space from the beginning, filled with old, personal objects. Furthermore, this project will slowly follow how the men's old objects and lifelong skillsets and values will be passed on to the next generation.

Inside the display cabinet that has the photos of Mr. Lee's father and grandfather above, there are suits hanging inside, which were made with the skills Mr. Lee learned from father and grandfather. As I looked at the old tailor who stands in front of this background and also hear his stories, I was able to get a glimpse of the years of life he had to endure and also think about what was it that he held onto. Additionally, I captured moments in an architect's old bookshelf full of books, the 50-year old Yubi Store located in Gwangjang Marketplace that is also full of fabrics, the metal manufacturing factory full of many objects and the large clock in Seongsu-dong, the blacksmith's hammer that was passed down for four generations, and their other old objects. I also thought of the 50 years of friendship between the owner of Jong-no Tailor Shop and the owner of Yubi Store. Their workplaces are made up of all the hours that they spent doing everything by hand, without the help of computers or machineries. The space is also filled with the spirit and skills that have been handed down for generations. I plan on depicting their stories slowly, like reading one book after another from an old bookshelf.

Thus, <From the Father's Times> is a project to remember the lives of the older generation. The project focuses on listening to the older generation's narrative and capturing the spaces that hold their fondest memories. In my first exhibition <The Golden Helmet> in 1996, I compared my father to Caesar. 25 years have passed and now my daughter is almost the same age as I was back then. <From the Father's Times> is also a story I share with my late father. I saw similar poses and heard similar phrases that reminded me of my father during this project. Time has passed and I am now invited to listen to my father's past stories and connect with his generation. I hope for the viewers of different generations to experience such a connection through this project.