ABSTRACT

A Study on the Photographic Expression of the Massacre Memorials in Vietnam

Jung Tae-Hwan
Advisor : Prof. Cho Dae-Yeon
Department of Photography
Graduate School of Gwangju University


During the Vietnam War, South Korea dispatched a large number of combat troops and the costs of entering in the war have become the basis for the modernization of the country. However, although it has been 45 years since the war ended, there has been still a lot of controversy surrounding the issue of the massacre of civilians by Korean soldiers at that time, and so far the both sides, the one who thinks we should make a sincere apology for it and the other who denies it, are standing face to face over this issue.
Meanwhile, the local residents in damaged area have set up the memorial monuments to blame their assailants and console the souls of the victims at the massacre field after the war, and the existence of such the massacre memorials is becoming the important key for finding out the truth about the massacre these days.
But, as the industrialization of Vietnam to lead to the changes in the local areas where the memorial monuments were located is progressing rapidly, the importance of the work of recording and preserving the memorials is growing bigger and bigger.
Therefore this study was carried out with the purpose of finding the value of photography as evidence for historical facts by taking the photographs of the memorial monuments established in the slaughter-area, and with hope that my work recording historical facts like this will be a stepping stone to prevent a war that may happen in the future.
For this purpose, I visited four provinces of Vietnam(Quang Ngai, Binding, Quang Nam, Phu Yen) where the massacre occurred and took a photographs of about 40 memorial monuments. The work was carried out using a 4X5 large format camera(Linhof Technica 2000) and Kodak TMX100 film, and the developed films were printed on the Ilford''s 11X14 glossy fiber base.
The significances of my work are, first, that brought up the issue of the massacre of civilians as confirming the existence of memorial monuments and photographing it, second, that demonstrated the possibility of a variety of approaches by attempting a different photographic expression of the monument.
The limitations of this study were the tightness of schedule and the limitations of local shooting conditions, but most of all, it was not able to look inside the victims and lack of analysis of the veterans who fought in the war at that time, and I saved these parts as a next task to be solved in the future.