Day and Night in Euljiro District

Sunmin Lee

After my exhibition “From the Father's Times” wound down, I visited a number of buildings in downtown Seoul, as old as the elderly models featured in my photographs. Strolling along Jongno Street, Cheonggyecheon Stream, and Euljiro Street, I travelled back in time. While gazing at the megastructures of Nagwon Sangga, Sewoon Sangga, and Daerim Sangga, historically important commercial arcades from Seoul's recent past, I contemplated their significance. To my surprise, even though Seoul's downtown skyline has changed over the years, with multiple redevelopment and modernization projects that have given rise to the city's skyscrapers, the arcades I visited had remained intact and untouched, as if time was of no relevance there. At one point in this urban excursion, I paused my journey, absorbed in the fragments of my own consciousness. It was at that very moment that the motive for this subsequent exhibition “From the Father's Times II: Day and Night in Euljiro District” was born.

On one early weekend morning, with a camera in my hands, I walked along the pedestrian walkway linking the streets of Jongno and Euljiro, a part of the roadway renovated as part of the Sewoon Sangga Arcade renewal project. As it had rained the day before, the sun climbing over Jongno gave me a clear view of Bukhansan Mountain in the distance. I visited the area on that day because I wanted to photograph buildings as old as the models highlighted in my exhibition “From the Father's Times.” I also wanted to prepare for meetings with the now silver-haired technicians who had maintained a presence in the arcade. With that in mind, I imagined taking in the aura of the venerable building, conjured up into dreams based on my research. However, my visit presented a quite different scene, shattering my preconceived notions. To begin with, the pedestrian walkway between Jongno and Euljiro, filled with the kinds of sensibilities unexpected in a downtown area, was a perfect venue for appreciating the urban beauty of Seoul. By the time I arrived at the end of the walkway and my destination of the Sewoon-Daerim Sangga Arcade, while savoring the landscapes of Inwangsan Mountain and Bukhansan Mountain rising in harmony with Seoul's skyline, I was swept up by embarrassment and a tangled web of feelings.

The diverse scenery unfolding at the end of the walkway, at this arcade in Euljiro District, was sending me varying messages in multifaceted ways. Dilapidated buildings with ruined signs waiting for demolition, coupled with structures wrapped in concrete form panels, were a telltale sign that the area was an epicenter of dismantlement and redevelopment. Yet, the adjacent arcade was bustling with vendors lifting shutters on their shops and preparing for weekend business. In contrast, the opposite side of the arcade, brimming with aged roofs and low buildings, resembled a scene from the 1950s, as if time had ceased. Then, the shops along the walkway — the hippest cafes with equally hip signs, restaurants with unconventional menus, and exotic workshops — were lined with the arcade's decades-old electronics and hardware stores, adding yet another novelty to the fascinating chaos of Euljiro District. These jumbled scenery naturally made me curious about the people who coexisted here.

As a photographer, I set up a temporary workshop for a week in one alley lined with metal workshops, which I had previously overlooked as I passed through the arcade. Here, I decided to ask people of varying ages and occupations, whom I had encountered in the arcade and the metal workshop alley, about why they came to Euljiro.

The first people I met were the 30-something members of an artist group, who, along with the area's metal workshop owners, had been working on an urban village renewal project for roughly five years. They introduced me to metal technicians in their 50s who worked at a workshop on the first floor of a building along the alley. One day, from morning till night, I met young people in their 20s and 30s who visited this metal workshop alley in Euljiro District. Following them to the upper floors of the same building led me to hidden yet vibrant establishments, such as galleries, pastry shops, wine bars, and craft workshops, where I also had conversations with young business owners. Then, I met the 70-something owner of abuilding working on the remodeling of an underground gallery. Finally, I met Lee Jung-sung, who used to work as the video artist Nam June Paik's project technician, a man who swore that he could find his way around the arcade blindfolded.

In this way, as a witness, I spent seven nights and days along this alley in Euljiro District within Sallim-dong, Seoul. I invited my temporary neighbors to my provisional workshop, interviewed them, through various means, about why they came to Euljiro and how they felt about the place, and then worked on adding their writings to my photographs of them. Some wrote their narratives on their own pictures; others had someone else do the job for them. Sometimes, their narratives resembled an epic saga; at other times, they were in the form of a short impression. One thing I found fascinating was that, even though I had only met with them briefly here in Euljiro District, listening to their narratives, as well as having the narratives inscribed on their photographs, either in their own hand or by me, nurtured in me the precious feelings of understanding and respect.

Being a photographer, when I first entered a metal fabrication factory operating in this alley, the screeching sound of metal and the peculiar smell of welding made me very uncomfortable. What made it more distressing were the averted glances of metal technicians working on the first floor of a building along the alley, which aggravated a sense of alienation in me. Plus, the stark contrast between the drabness of the metal workshop alley and the kaleidoscopic colors of the young hipsters' attire hung over me, at first, as an unpleasant incongruity. Yet, everything had changed after a week of opening my workshop there, taking their pictures, listening to their narratives, and writing down their stories. Somewhat uncannily, these experiences allowed my mind to better understand and connect with the people I had met during my stay, regardless of age or occupation.

Trucks and motorcycles loading and unloading things in the narrow alley, people passing by, he backs of metal workers engrossed in their work, the noise of grinding metal, the smell of welding — all these and more made up the hustle and bustle of the metal fabrication alley in Sallim-dong during the day. But once night fell and the variegated shutters were closed, the same alley became witness to young people in groups of three to five visiting cafes and wine bars. In this way, Euljiro never rested from early morning till late into the night. These diurnal and nocturnal glimpses of Euljiro District and its diverse narratives coexisting in harmony form the core of my latest exhibition “From the Father's Times II” and constitute the question it asks of the contemporary age in which we live, a question that transcends the times of our fathers. A young visitor to Euljiro said he recommended others visit the area because it was a place where you could see for yourself the coexistence of dissimilar vocations and generations, a notion he described as “pleasant heterogeneity and harmony.” A 23-year-old college student, who visited the alley to pick up a cake she had ordered, said that, although at first she thought of the sounds and smells that permeate the area as peculiar and was afraid of the middle-aged workers in the alley, when she gazed at them long enough, she discovered the innocent smiles on their faces. A 50-something factory manager of a metal fabrication factory, who had worked in Euljiro District for 30 years, expressed his envy toward young visitors to the district, adding that they enjoyed such privilege thanks to the hard labor of workers like him. A business owner, who came to Seoul at the age of 15 and had worked in the glass and stainless steel business for more than 40 years, said he wanted to start enjoying life in the countryside once his building was demolished. Finally, the elderly master art technician I met in Sewoon-Daerim Arcade said he hoped that the works of Nam June Paik he had helped to create would continue to exist forever, even if it took the passing down of his technical knowhow to his successors without recompense.

Most models featured in this exhibition I had met in Euljiro District posed in front of the camera while covering more than half of their faces with masks. Amidst the contact-free age engendered by the COVID-19 pandemic, working on this exhibition made me ruminate on how art should deal with an absence of communication, and such concerns were directly reflected within the content and exhibits of the exhibition. The first floor of the exhibition hall highlighted the photos of “senior alchemists” born between the 1930s and 1950s. The second floor exhibited the photos and writings of young and middle-aged people of diverse ages and occupations I had met while in Euljiro District. The final section of the exhibition, a reproduction of my Euljiro workshop, was taken up with the very same camera, printer, and books that had filled the original. In this workshop at one corner of the exhibition hall, visitors stood between the photographer and the camera, and had their front and rear profiles, as well as hands and feet, photographed. Then, on their black and white photos, they jotted down their memories and feelings about their “fathers.” In this way, the self-portraits and narratives of diverse generations, all contemplating the same keyword of “father,” filled a wall in the exhibition hall, decorating the finale of this exhibition. The photos of their front and back profiles as well as those of their legs and the back of their hands, and the wall behind them, featured text imbued with the yearning and ambivalence (love and hatred) surrounding their fathers — akin to a tattoo or thorn. And these writings recounted the memories, longing, and passing associated with their fathers. Personal narratives, each fragmented and limited in its own way, were pinned up in relation to the other after careful consideration. In this age of constrained dialogue and contact, if audiences find a way to connect with these photos, slowly read through the private narratives enclosed within, and interact with the stories they have come across, then these personal narratives will have been transformed into narratives that document the epoch we find ourselves in.

In this regard, the time the models and I spent with masks donning our faces in Euljiro District and the exhibition hall, and the time visitors spent gazing at the photos on display, taking pictures in the workshop, and writing down their thoughts — all of these were periods characterized by silence. Yet, I wish to annotate these periods as “the communication of silence.” This is what the exhibition “From the Father's Times II: Day and Night in Euljiro District” suggests as a way forward, as a way of communicating with our fellow humans, in this so-called age of “untact.” This is also a discourse on the social role of art as an agent of metaphor and healing, and, at the same time, a question posed to audiences and all those whose photos occupy the entire wall of the exhibition venue under the very same keyword of “father.“ It is, indeed, a question about what shape the “common good“ must take in our age as we move forward.