Performing Multitemporality

Chapter 3 examines the politics of photography in South Korea during the era of the military government’s censorship of media and cultural production, through the dramatic changes of the 1980s’ democratization movements. The chapter reconsiders iconic photographs of the two key South Korean democratization movements—the 4.19 Revolution of 1960 and 1987 June Uprising. Between these signal events, extreme censorship hindered the practice of photography as a political tool for the citizenry. The rise of the Saenghwaljuui realism photography movement nonetheless demonstrates the engagement of photographers with the everydayness of postwar struggle through aestheticization. Exploring the temporality of photography in the experience and memory of democratization movements, the chapter explicates the ways in which photography enables multitemporal engagements with iconic, and later collective, images of public dissent and their affect in the continued meaning and memory making of the events.