Im Seyoung in America: 1955 to 1956 (2017)
In January 2013, an album containing 184 photos turned up in Cheonggaecheon flea market in Seoul. They show the life of a Korean man named Im Seyoung from the late 1930s to the 1970s. During this period Korea went through Japanese occupation, World War II, the Korean War and the post-war rebuilding period. The photos show Im Seyoung as he grows from a primary school student around ten years old to a career as a power plant engineer in his early forties.
Of the 184 photos, 57 of them – roughly a third – show the period he spent in America during the 1950s, only a couple of years after the end of the Korean War. He was in his mid to late 20s. Most of this time seems to have been spent living in California where he attended UC Berkeley. The 28 images in this exhibition show a trip he took with several other men to Seattle, Boston, Chicago, New York and Washington D.C., in the winter of 1955 to 1956. It is unknown if this trip came before, during or after the period living in California.
The photos are numbered according to their original position in the album. I have attempted to place them in chronological order, according to the clues contained within each image.