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Travelling to another country was a very larger learning curve for me. Actually travelling to the unfamiliar and settling into another culture is allot tougher than I thought it would be.
I over came the different culture and soon got used to the way you are seen by other people in that country, and that not all people see you the way you see other people. I was just as facinating to the Korean’s as they were to me. The country aren’t used to foreign people in their country yet as its only a recent thing that the country has been open to foreigners.
When i first arrived into the country I was very shocked and apalled by the behavious of the everyday people in Korea. Many people were incredibly rude and you was pushed and barged into quite allot, it wasn’t until someone explained to me the nature of the Korean culture that I actually understood why they were so rude.
It turns out that if you are not introduced to someone personally in Korea, you technically do not exist, so therefore they don’t see you. It sounds rather strange, but I soon learned that the people were absolutely lovely and very welcoming once you had been introduced to them.
People in restaurants and bars, were lovely, they would fall over themselves to make your stay happy and pleasant.
The food was also another learning curve as they do not eat western food out there, it was all completely different. I learned fast that Koreans do not waste a thing. They ate things like intestines and other animal parts. As well as traditional Korean meals such as Galbi, Donkas and Bu-deh-jii-geh.
The first image is traditional Galbi,which you can have either Korean beef of bacon. and you get it served with lots of different side dishes.
The second image is Donkas, which is like a Korean version of Chicken Parmazzan. This is pork meat with cheese covered in breadcrombs with a sweet sauce on the top.
The third image is Bu-deh-jii-geh, which is a very strange meal that I wasn’t too keen on.
In this stew looking bowl there are noodles, ricecakes, vegetables and hot dog sausages the sauce that the food is in is quite a spicy sauce and is served with a bowl of rice.
Travelling to another country and experiencing all the things that I did was an incredible learning curve for me because I do want to travel and spend time in other countries. And I learned that it wasnt as easy as I thought, sometimes I felt I shouldnt be taking images. Sometimes I felt I was invading the privicy of people. I never thought that I would feel like that but I gained a great deal of respect for the people and didnt want to invade privacy sometimes.
Lewis Wickes Hine was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin on 26th September 1874. He studied sociology in Chigago and New York, before finding work at the Ethical Culture School, Hine purchased his first camera in 1903, employed his photographs in his teaching and established documentary photography.
Hine used his camera to capture the poverty he witnessed in New York. Which included the study of Ellis Island immigrants. In 1908 Hine published ‘charities and the cammons’, a collection of photographs of tenements and sweatshops. He used these images to help bring about social reform. He told one meething that he beleive his photographs would encourage people to ‘exert the force to right wrongs’.
One of the major pieces of work Hine did was working for the National Child Labour Committee photographing child labour in the Carolinas and day labours before their time. Hine travelled the country photographing children working in factories. In one 12 month period he covered over 12,000 miles.
Unlike photographers hired by Thomas Bernardo, hine made no attempt to exaggerate the poverty of these young people. Critics claimed his images weren’t ‘shocking enough’. hine argued that people were more likely to join the campaign against child labour if they felt the photographs accurately captured the reality of the situation.
What I like about Hines work is that is a true abmount of whats goin on, he doesnt like to exaggerate the truth, he does not add anything to his images, what you see is truely what is happening. I have seen many of the bernardo images and they are just awful. I would like to make tre documentary images rather than images that have been edited and added to make it more dramatic.
When I go to document the village i wasn to capture the true nature of the village and the people in it.
I really like the images above and think they they would have been just as useful as the Bernardo images.
As you see the protraits of the children you really see how Hine has captured the person and the images draw you in.
I would like my images to do a similar thing, draw you in and make you want to look.
