The Way They Look Is Poetry

When Goh Eun realized that his photographer was the same age as he was, he said, “Let’s call each other by our first names from now on.” After serious consideration, the photographer made up his mind and shouted, “Hey, Goh Eun!” Then, the Korean poet burst out laughing. The man in the picture was a poet who wrote poetry under the influence only one day after putting a piece of paper that read “No Alcohol” on the wall, and an energetic soul who was not daunted by the frequent calls from the National Intelligence Agency for an investigation.

Yook Myeong-shim, 74, who is famous for the “Ordinary People” series, a collection of photographs depicting average people’s lives, released his new work “The Portrait of Writers,” a collection of pictures of 71 writers. Yook used to take pictures of art, music and dance artists in the 1970s. The new collection includes photos and related stories of the famous Korean writers such as Yang Joo-dong, Park Mok-wol, Seo Jeong-joo, and Cha Beom-seok. Many of the pictures, which even the writers did not see themselves, are being released to the world for the first time.

Park Doo-jin, a poet known for “Cheong Rok Pa” with other two poets, got a call from the National Academy of Arts when the photographer visited him. He was told that he had been selected as a member of the academy and he would get notified, but declined the offer. He seemed to be calm as if nothing happened. Park, resting his chin on his cupped hands in the picture, looks fastidious and upright.

Female writers avoided Yook because he dealt with them “like a general surgeon, not a cosmetic surgeon.” He met Kang Eun-gyo. Kang, a poet and a mother of a young daughter, was a “real ordinary person” in his words. While she was quite reticent, answering only the questions asked, the photographer discovered her humility of listening to others in the silence of the female poet.

In the picture of Seo Jeong-joo leaning against the wall, the poet looks extremely relaxed and humane on the one hand, but indifferent to everything on the other. Yook looked back retrospectively on him, saying, “A poet asked me how I could take a picture of a great poet representing Korean literature like a stupid man sitting on the toilet.”

Yook’s work includes other poets: Kim Chun-soo, a meticulous and strict poet who even came to the print shop to polish up his work, and Cheon Sang-byeong, whose body and soul were devastated after being investigated by the infamous National Intelligence Agency due to his alleged involvement in the so-called “East Berlin Spy Ring” when South Korea`s anti-communist intelligence agency fabricated a pro-Pyongyang spy ring in 1967 to silence dissidents. The facial impressions in the pictures taken by Yook enable us to guess their attitude and the world of their work easily. That is the way the photographer describes his intent: “Year after year, I found writers taking off the clothes of artists and realized the aura of their life traces reflected by the way they live.”

kimjy@donga.com