michael hurt korea
In Korea, however, a Macintosh computer was also initially a symbol of being a part of the artistic intelligentsia, but the heavy markup price also made it a symbol of wealth. What, then, makes this city so very compelling? “While I was away in Korea, Korea became hot and cool and became a legitimate place to look at. Hurt recalled that while growing up Korean and Black in Ohio, Americans did not engage deeply with Korean culture. He received his doctorate from UC Berkeley's Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies and started Korea's first street fashion blog in 2006. A Seoul-based visual sociologist and fashion photographer, Michael Hurt (Instagram @kuraeji) lectures in Cultural Theory and Art History at the Korea National University of the Arts and Visual Sociology and Technomethodology at the Daegu Institute of Science and Technology. For the previous installments in his series “Kool Korea by hashtag,” please click here and here and here. --Please Subscribe-- Website: https://seoulpodcast.com The integration of a deep-rooted culture with advanced technology? Here he captures a young woman’s outfit, tied together by subtly suggestive items, highlighting the boldness of modern Korean fashion. Using his camera to build connections, access communities, and investigate subcultures, he often engages with his subjects from the standpoint of a “participant-practitioner,” someone who is active in the communities he researches. The more recent picture above, taken in the youth-oriented art-school district Hongdae, provides a rich glimpse into the Seoul experience, capturing, as Hurt says, “what Henri Cartier-Bresson would call the ‘decisive moment.’ All the elements come together, and catching it requires a real feel for and knowledge of both the area and the people within it, combined with an instinctual familiarity with one’s equipment and the technical limits of one’s camera to capture that moment when it happens.”, In this case, Hurt explains, “you have to already be pushing the shutter button when she upchucks, having known she was going to do that before the fact. Michael Hurt, Contributor. © 2019 Los Angeles Review of Books. March 29, 2019. He received his doctorate from UC Berkeley’s Department of Ethnic Studies and started Korea’s … Last month we featured the work of Seoul-based Korean-black American street photographer Michael Hurt here on the Korea Blog. Dr. Michael W. Hurt (@kuraeji on Instagram) is a photographer and professor living in Seoul. Hurt favours wide angle portraits taken from a lower angle in his street photographs. Michael Hurt, Korea National University of Arts “Back then, Korean media tended to be much more ethno-nationalist,” he said. By Michael Hurt asiatimes.com — SEOUL – In the decades since democratization came to the country in 1987, one of the most obvious trends running through South Korean society has been diversification. … He liked it at the time, but having realized the cliché inherent in the contrasts, admits that he’s “not very into this picture anymore” — but I, a much more recent arrival, still am. D. Longtime expat, photographer, and thinker Michael Hurt discusses issues of George Floyd, racism in Korea and America, and the new visa re-entry restrictions. While no longer as militarized as it was in the decades right after the Korean War, South Korean society still has a faintly martial tint that might surprise and even discomfit travelers from the West or other east Asian countries. And Korea’s first street fashion photographer and blogger, since 2006, 니가s! Using his camera to build connections, access communities, and investigate subcultures, he often engages with his subjects from the standpoint of a “participant-practitioner,” someone who is … Join Facebook to connect with Michael Hurt and others you may know. Clothing, Social Empathy, and the Power of Stepping Into Someone Else's Shoes . For Andover students interested in pursuing photography, Hurt had a simple piece of advice: just try it. Michael Hurt is a visual sociologist who has been writing, teaching, and shooting in Seoul since 2002. But while those shots all capture something essential about the life of the city, most of them depict the Seoul of at least a decade ago — the equivalent, surely, of something like 25 years of change in Los Angeles. I’m an American citizen. 07/14/2014 10:17pm EDT | Updated September 13, 2014. Dr. Michael Hurt (Instagram @kuraeji) is a visual sociologist and fashion photographer living in Seoul who pays the bills by lecturing in Cultural Theory at the Korea National University of the Arts and other universities. Michael Hurt, Contributor. He is in the final stages of his doctoral degree from UC Berkeley's Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies. Some visitors find it interesting and some don’t, but I always like seeing a historical (or at least historically styled) structure amid a forest of gleaming high-rises. I had a flame, and the gasoline is everything in Korea,” said Hurt. (From https://asiatimes.com/2020/09/kool-korea-by-hashtag-1-beauty-of-decay/), Hurt posted this image on his Instagram page, @Kuraeji, on July 6, 2020. Rapid change? Click here to find personal data about Michael Hurt including phone numbers, addresses, directorships, electoral roll information, related property prices and other useful information. This is about when my camera going in the direction of ‘gender performance’ and young women.” His photography and research in those areas has since led him to develop the field of visual sociology with Korea as a subject, a project further documented at his site Deconstructing Korea. It is just a fact of life and a part of the culture. In Seoul, few see this as clearly as Michael Hurt, a Korean-black American photographer who grew up in Ohio and first came here to live in 1994 as part of the Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Program. (From the blog: https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/the-korea-blog/capturing-seouls-street-style-michael-hurts-fashion-photography/), Embracing digital photo-editing techniques, Hurt doesn’t shy away capturing an exaggerated Korean aesthetic. –Please Subscribe– Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/960226. “The only way to figure out what’s going on in that community is to actually participate in it… I become an actor in their field, as opposed to someone who’s an outsider. Photographer, Professor. Facebook: https://facebook.com/SeoulPodcast Tokyo has long had that image sewn up. Korean model April Song (Instagram @april_ssong2) models a modern Vietnamese ao … Michael Hurt. I use digital to enhance reality, and I think that’s the reality people experience here and are comfortable with… Korea has embraced artifice as its own aesthetic,” said Hurt. Support student journalism and get the latest Andover news delivered to your mailbox, Min Jae Yoo ’12 Carries the Olympic Torch, Advocates for Lacrosse Awareness in Korea, Puzzle Pieces of Identity: Hijoo Son Speaks on"The Diasporic Intimacy and Transindividuality of Korean Artists", https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/the-korea-blog/capturing-seouls-street-style-michael-hurts-fashion-photography/, https://asiatimes.com/2020/09/kool-korea-by-hashtag-1-beauty-of-decay/. however, most of it is in Korean, written with the common Korean cultural assumption that no non-Koreans would care, anyway. Michael Hurt ’90 is a street photographer and academic based in Seoul, South Korea. I am not in a position to review her thesis, however, Jean Soh, who holds a doctorate on Eastern political thoughts, left several comments which refute what Hurt quotes from Kim. You can follow Colin Marshall at his web site, on Twitter @colinmarshall, or on Facebook. You can see more of Michael Hurt’s photography on Instagram and Flickr, and in future posts here on the Korea Blog. ... which is short for Seoul National, Korea, and Yonsei Universities. 10/19/2012 05:28pm EDT | Updated December 6, 2017. “[Korea] was a much better environment to be doing photography in than the U.S. [In America], I know the culture. Sure, if you’ve never heard of Bangkok. How do you convince someone to spend their limited travel time and money in Seoul? The image just above comes from a time, he says, “when I began noticing that Outback Steakhouses were a highly gendered space, dominated by twentysomething women.” This led to the realization that “what Koreans called ‘family restaurants’ were actually spaces for young women to socialize. There is a lot of information about Korean fashion designers on the Internet. Dr. Michael W. Hurt. Michael Hurt in The Korean Style — Hypermodernity and the Art of Artifice The Elements of a Korean Style: Parasite, PSY, and the Synthetic/Syncretic, Korean Aesthetic They don’t really come to Seoul for its the renowned cultural institutions or its distinguished architecture, and certainly not for its history or diversity. In Korea, as Hurt well knows, depictions of “bad things” about the country can hit a nerve (“good things,” by contrast, can include sights that play up the glories of the country’s distant past, the modernity of its buildings, its bounty of upscale commerce, and its industrial and technological prowess). “I try to make my output on Instagram match the hyper-modern society that I find myself in, so I’ve been calling Korea the first truly hyper-modern society, and I try to make my photography a hyper-modern art practice. In the cases of both Los Angeles and Seoul, the answer always comes down, unsatisfyingly though it may sound, to a kind of unromantic vitality: though the basic elements of both cities can seem dull, dysfunctional, and even dangerous, the life lived among them, filled with boundless amounts of energy often flowing at cross purposes, offers a bottomless and ever self-refreshing subject of study. By the time I’m doing my photography and fitting all that together in 2014, I was like, ‘I’ve been doing all this academic research on subcultures and communities. Announcements. All rights reserved. “I came across this dude standing there looking like he had stepped out of time machine,” Hurt says of this 2002 shot. Quick, summon an exorcist: Model @sora.mill struggles to keep her head on straight. Salim, one of Vietnam’s most influential fashionistas, with 880K followers on Instagram (@salimhwg) wears a dress by top Korean brand GREEDILOUS in Hanoi, 2018. Michael Hurt. kuraeji@gmail.com. Michael Hurt Editor and Photographer. Subscribe here! Cheap food and a pleasurable nightlife? “I took this in after one of the big anti-American protests in Gwanghwamun,” Hurt says of the image above, “when the streets were blocked off but people were still milling about, lending a street festival-like vibe only extant for short periods of time.” I’ve come to Korea at a far less anti-American era, but should that sentiment arise again, it would no doubt make itself felt in this very same monument-scaled downtown space. This is quintessentially Hongdae on a Saturday night, no matter what anyone says about this being a ‘negative image of Korea’ — which it most certainly is not. It was a natural site for mass gatherings charged with strong emotions,” whether of celebration or condemnation. 13 min read Korean culture is a many-visaged beast, although this metaphor should rightly include a bear, at least. He started the first street fashion blog in South Korea, and has covered Seoul Fashion Week for the last seven years. Hurt’s understanding of Korean neo-Confucianism is dependent upon Taeyon Kim’s 2003 thesis Neo-Confucian Body Techniques: Women’s Bodies in Korea’s Consumer Society. He also uses digital photo editing to capture the “hyper-modern” Korean aesthetic. blog.lareviewofbooks.org/the-korea...seen-street-photographer-michael-hurt This is a shot across the bow to anyone who only wants the world to know about Korea as what I call ‘Arirang and hanbok.’ Korea is what it is, and it ain’t always fan dances and fairy tales about fishermen. Dr. Michael Hurt (@kuraeji on Instagram) is a photographer and professor living in Seoul. He demonstrates again his characteristic wide shot low-angle street portraiture style. Michael Hurt ’90 is a street photographer and academic based in Seoul, South Korea. 200 2018년 제15권 제2호 ⓒ Michael Hurt Figure 3 — In 2008, when I was shooting street fashion at fashion industry events for my now-defunct street fashion blog, such as above at the SFAA shows or at Seoul Fashion Week, street fashion as a socio-pictorial practice was not yet developed in Korea, and was confined to peripheral spaces such as the parking lot. There is a foreigner in Korea creating a new type of Hallyu unknown to Koreans. Twitter: https://twitter.com/kingsejong. View the profiles of people named Michael Hurt. Vietnam holds one of the most positive images of Korean style in the world.PHOTO by Dr. Michael W. Hurt Read the week’s top stories from The Phillipian, curated for your inbox. by Michael Hurt December 14, 2020 SEOUL – In the decades since democratization came to the country in 1987, one of the most obvious trends running through South Korean society has been diversification. We have found 39 people in the UK with the name Michael Hurt. Photo: Michael Hurt Although this hashtag represents a foreign concept – ie an imported American holiday – because it is in Hangeul (Korean alphabet), it is only accessible Koreans and those operating in the Korean milieu/language. The name Gwanghwamun refers to the main gate of Gyeongbokgung Palace, the reconstructed 14th-century compound that Seoul promotes as a prime tourist attractions. The officials tasked with promoting South Korea abroad have racked their brains over that very question for years and years, coming up with little in the way of sure-fire selling points for their capital city. Michael Hurt, Contributor. The picture above captures a moment when Hurt passed by one such soldier “who had seemingly taken his short leave from the military a bit past the limit. Ease of communication? Photographer, Professor. Why not plug that in?’… In the time I was here, Korea got cool, and suddenly there are things for me to do that fit in academically,” said Hurt. Michael Hurt is a photographer and professor living in Seoul, Korea. The biggest problem for the Korean fashion industry is the same problem that other Korean cultural industries have had-- South Korea is a pretty insular culture, both online and off. Street photography had already established itself in Los Angeles and other cities across America and Europe, but in Seoul, apart from a cameraman named Kim Ki Chan who documented neighborhood activity in the 1960s and 70s, it remained a virtually unknown tradition. (From https://www.instagram.com/p/CCVK7eyDhB2/). He emphasized the importance of learning with hands-on practice rather than getting tangled in theory and technicalities. Michael Hurt in Deconstructing Korea The Elements of a Korean Style: Parasite, PSY, and the Synthetic/Syncretic, Korean Aesthetic Michael Hurt in The Korean Style — … Those who would object to the portrayal of one of the country’s defenders in such a defenseless state might have an even stronger objection to the picture above, which Hurt snapped on the way through Seoul Cheongnyangni 588 red-light district. A visual sociologist/photographer/professor (한예종/K-ARTS) doing #street, #streetfashion, and #ethnographic photography in Korea. “It’s no coincidence that Gwanghwamun was the site for the 2002 World Cup festivities and the big anti-American demonstrations. A Visual Sociologist based in Seoul as a photographer, and professor migrant worker. Beijing changes faster now, for better or worse. Longitme expat, photographer, and thinker Michael Hurt discusses issues of George Floyd, racism in Korea and America, and the new visa re-entry restrictions. I’m familiar with the culture, so it’s not that interesting to me. Don’t get any given tourist started. On the streets of Seoul, Hurt shoots with wide-angle shots and lower angles. However, Hurt’s research and photography eventually went on to coincide with the global rise of Korean culture in the 2010s. I slowed down the shutter and held the camera steady to get the motion in the back, which added a dreamy feel.”. As a student researching ethnic studies in the ’90s, he struggled to study Korea in an Asian studies landscape that centered on China and Japan. Although his interest in photography stemmed from his childhood, Hurt first focused on street photography in Korea while conducting research for his dissertation in 2002. After completing a graduate program in comparative ethnic studies at UC Berkeley in 2002, he returned to Korea and spent the next few years taking his camera to the streets in a serious way, capturing whatever struck him as the real visual and social texture of life in the city. Hurt said, “Getting photographic authority to call yourself a photographer if you walk out and pull the shutter button is the toughest thing to do… The best way to establish that kind of authority to be doing what you’re doing. But nobody can actually extricate the “bad things” about any place worth visiting, let alone living, from the “good,” and Seoul provides just about the richest mixture of the two going today. I’m not afraid of digital. Doesn't fit into the acronym, but it's up there bumping shoulders of those universities in terms of quality and reputation. I’ve had plenty of similar conversations about Los Angeles, another city which provokes in me (and a select but growing number of others) a fascination bordering on obsession, but whose appeal doesn’t always present itself to the first-, second-, or even third-time visitor. Announcements. Dr. Hurt has also worked with documentary film producers and … “This was when prostitution was getting into the news,” he remembers, “and the statistic that the industry was four percent of the GDP was getting some play, but there was still a strong social dislike for bad news about Korea, and this picture was flagged as ‘anti-Korean’ when I exhibited it.” But urban redevelopment has had its way with Cheongnyangni, as with many other neighborhoods, hollowing out the venerable 588 — as much an institution, in its way, as Gyeongbokgung. But if I’m an outsider, everything, like going to the bathroom, is interesting to me. I’m an insider. According to Hurt, cultural differences between the U.S. and Korea fostered his interest in Korean street photography. Don’t tell that to the fashion sector. It’s a way of making yourself a practical insider for a while,” said Hurt. In that space, … Some of this has to do with the constant presence, here and there, of uniformed young fellows enlisted in their mandatory military stint but temporarily free to go out on the town. This makes me a predictable Westerner in Korea, since our eyes tend to get caught by all the old-and-new contrasts the city offers up, such as the one above. Michael Hurt, who lectures on cultural theory at the Korea National University of Arts, says during that time, many South Koreans watched lopsided … On Korean Christian Homophobia. Photographer, Professor. This picture is me ‘keeping it real.’ That’s the only thing I ever wanted to do with my camera in Korea.”. In Korean fashion, ordinary is extraordinary. Even aside from the formidable challenge of competing against name brands like New York, London, and Paris, Seoul struggles to positively distinguish itself, even in broad strokes, from the other metropolises of Asia. Ultimately, according to sociologist and University of Seoul lecturer Michael Hurt, South Korea needs to rid itself of ingrained sexism and reform … Hurt shot all the pictures selected here during the early 2000s, the most street life-focused period of his photographic career. The best way to do it is to do it internally, by going to start and doing it.”. Guest: Michael Hurt, Ph. Billed Into Silence: Money and the Miseducation of Women. March 29, 2019.