Topic: More Looking Backward (Read 7536 times)

RSL · « **Reply #20 on:** November 29, 2020, 09:16:39 am »

A Korean family. War over. 1954.

RSL · « **Reply #21 on:** November 29, 2020, 11:03:22 am »

These folks are living in shacks along the Naktong river. I made the shot (and a bunch more) from the bridge that runs through the center of Taegu. A 20 x 20 print of this particular picture hangs in my studio. These are folks who just stood up and walked south at the end of the war, before the border closed. They couldn't take anything with them. I suspect most of them are multimillionaires now. They had guts.

RSL · « **Reply #22 on:** November 29, 2020, 12:12:14 pm »

I always carried two cameras. Just ran across this one. Same family. This must have been during the summer of 1953. The war ended on July 27th, and it obviously wasn't later in the winter.

RSL · « **Reply #23 on:** November 30, 2020, 07:39:26 pm »

I'm quite sure I've posted this one before. It's from 1954. I shot from the back of a 6x6 truck.

Rajan Parrikar · « **Reply #24 on:** December 01, 2020, 05:58:27 am »

Outstanding, Russ.

RSL · « **Reply #25 on:** December 01, 2020, 07:50:28 am »

Thanks, Rajan. Here's another look at a downtown Taegu market, shortly after the war was over.

RSL · « **Reply #26 on:** December 01, 2020, 11:54:31 am »

I've posted this heartbreaker before; maybe more than once. If you were waiting for a military bus in Taegu a kid would come up to you and beg. If you gave him anything at all you'd almost instantly be surrounded by fifty or so kids, all begging. That major looks like a really mean guy, but he's learned that he has to do what he's doing.

Rayyan · « **Reply #27 on:** December 01, 2020, 02:29:10 pm »

A wonderful collection, Russ.
I wonder what goes through your mind when you look at them now?

Stay safe.

RSL · « **Reply #28 on:** December 02, 2020, 08:07:53 am »

There’s more to come, Rayyan; still more from immediately postwar Korea, then a few from Thailand, then more from Vietnam.

I look back on this stuff with mixed emotions. In Korea I was a 23-year-old kid, flying fighter-bombers and shooting pictures in my spare time. I can’t really get in touch any longer with my thoughts then. But I can get in touch with my thoughts ten years later when I was a radar site operations officer in Thailand and later, a radar site commander in the Vietnam delta. Finally, another eight years later, I was commander of all the radar sites we had left in Southeast Asia. I don’t have many pictures from that final tour because I was a busy bee while we were bombing in Cambodia, and after that stopped, keeping my troops more or less under control as they indulged in what the Thai call sanuk (a capacity for fun) . But what I do have is a dozen short stories I wrote shortly after I got back http://www.russ-lewis.com/asia/Shorts/S-preface.html.

RSL · « **Reply #29 on:** December 02, 2020, 09:23:29 am »

The Game. Taegu, Korea, 1954.

Eric Myrvaagnes · « **Reply #30 on:** December 02, 2020, 09:58:10 am »

How familiar were you with H C-B back then? Whether you realized it at the time or not, most of these are real Street. Bravo!

RSL · « **Reply #31 on:** December 02, 2020, 02:44:00 pm »

Hi Eric, I knew nothing about HCB until one evening a couple years after I got back from Vietnam I was walking downtown in Colorado Springs (with my Canon 7) and I stopped in Henry Clausen's bookstore. Henry was a specialist in rare books and he had shelves of not-at-all-rare used books in his shop. I pulled out a copy of The World of Henri Cartier-Bresson, and suddenly I had a name for what I'd been doing. It was a revelation. I still have that book.

langier · « **Reply #32 on:** December 02, 2020, 03:13:17 pm »

It may be time to put together some kind of book, even if Blurb or similar. Your collection is bunch of moments that should be preserved as a document of an era now gone.

RSL · « **Reply #33 on:** December 02, 2020, 03:20:18 pm »

I've thought about that, Larry, but I'll let my four sons worry about that after I'm gone.

RSL · « **Reply #34 on:** December 03, 2020, 08:04:23 am »

Parallel parking, Taegu, 1953

RSL · « **Reply #35 on:** December 03, 2020, 10:01:04 am »

Me and 392, K2, Taegu, Korea, 1953. (Not street. Sorry)

Eric Myrvaagnes · « **Reply #36 on:** December 03, 2020, 11:16:14 am »

Quote from: langier on December 02, 2020, 03:13:17 pm

It may be time to put together some kind of book, even if Blurb or similar. Your collection is bunch of moments that should be preserved as a document of an era now gone.

I agree!

And of the new two, I especially enjoy Parallel Parking.

RSL · « **Reply #37 on:** December 04, 2020, 08:08:28 am »

Thanks, Eric. Here's another Taegu market.

RSL · « **Reply #38 on:** December 04, 2020, 10:06:27 am »

The Donghwasa temple was up in the mountains above the K2 airbase. We made a jeep ride up one day.

Eric Myrvaagnes · « **Reply #39 on:** December 04, 2020, 02:39:34 pm »

More gems.

The colors seem to be quite robust. What film were you using back then?

Author Topic: More Looking Backward (Read 7536 times)