2024-03-23 18:09:59
Byun Young-wook’s 100-year photo no. 53
We live in an era where anyone can take great pictures of their family and scenery with a smartphone camera. In today’s world where photos abound, we take a look at black and white photos that were published in newspapers 100 years ago. It is also a journey to find the original form of our images through readers’ comments.
The photo I will introduce today is a photo published in the Dong-A Ilbo on March 22, 1924. Four women are wearing graduation gowns and graduation caps, looking straight ahead at the photographer. The woman on the far right of the photo is wearing glasses so black they could be called sunglasses.
The graduation ceremony photo is clear, but let’s look at the explanation of what it’s about.
4 graduatesThe Ewha University Graduation Ceremony in Jeong-dong, downtown, was held at the Jeong-dong Chapel at 7:30 p.m. on the 20th. There were about 1,000 guests and audience members. Graduation certificates were given to Kim Ro-da and three others wearing snow-like clothes and square hats, and graduates Kim Jong-jun and Yang Kim. Rhoda gave a graduation speech and the ceremony ended with a graduation song that was a mixture of joy and sorrow. This year, there were four graduates. /Dong-A Ilbo, March 22, 1924
▶ There was a graduation ceremony with the university at Ewha Hakdang in Jeong-dong, downtown Seoul. It was unusual that the graduation ceremony was held at 7:30 p.m. In a time when it was difficult to make a living, it would have been convenient for guests and parents to attend the graduation ceremony after work. There are four graduates, but considering that there were as many as 1,000 congratulatory guests, curiosity about the people in the photo grows.
▶ Nowadays, graduation ceremonies are held in late February and entrance ceremonies are held in early March, but 100 years ago, they were held one month later. If you look at the newspapers, you will see this pattern: graduation in March and new semester starting on April 1st. The March newspaper, which is the graduation season, contains ID photos of outstanding graduates from each school. The same faces can be seen not only in Dong-A Ilbo but also in Chosun Ilbo and Maeil Shinbo. Since the photos are different for each newspaper, it appears that photographers from the newspaper went to each school and took pictures of the students themselves, rather than photos provided by the school. The top graduates must have had quite a busy schedule that day. Each newspaper company would have asked to come and take pictures.
▶By today’s standards, it is a ‘strange’ report to publish the face of the best graduate of Ewha Womans University’s college in a newspaper. I thought about why. The age of high school or college graduates is around 17 to 20 years old, so after about 20 years of social life, they would have been in their late 30s or early 40s. The faces that appeared in newspapers in the 1920s would have played important roles in various fields 20 years later when our country was founded in 1945. Perhaps that was why the newspaper seemed obsessed with introducing the birth of a person who would be responsible for the future of our society.
▶The graduation cap was described as a square cap. There is no difference in shape from the graduation cap used at college graduation ceremonies these days. But no matter how important a person is, aren’t the photos too boring? If I were to write in a newspaper right now the image of four people staring straight ahead with expressionless expressions, I think readers would be puzzled. There is a big difference in feeling compared to the current photo. It is possible that the pictures we take and see now are overly packaged and exaggerated.
▶As I look at the boring photos, I wonder when photos of people throwing their graduation caps at graduation ceremonies began to appear. It is sometimes published in newspapers and often attached to articles on the Internet. This is a photo that you, our readers, may have taken at least once.
Since when have you been taking these types of photos? I looked into the Dong-A Ilbo photo database and found that its history is not as long as I thought. The oldest photo was taken on May 4, 2000. The photo description is as follows.
“I’m already in the mood for graduation – Humanities students taking yearbook photos in front of Yonsei University’s main building on the 4th ahead of their graduation in February next year. At the photographer’s signal, they all cheer and throw their graduation caps in the air. “May 4, 2000.”
▶ After looking up information through an Internet search, I found that the first time students wore graduation uniforms in Korea was at the graduation ceremony of Jejungwon, the first modern higher education institution and medical school, in 1908. Based on the experiences of international students in the United States, they wore black gowns and black square hats with black tassels. Articles about the U.S. Naval Academy Commissioning Ceremony starting with the performance of throwing the graduation cap into the sky are searched here and there. There is also an explanation that they would have celebrated a new beginning by throwing their graduation caps, symbolizing their student status, into the air while receiving officer caps with rank insignia. There is also a theory that Irish shepherds were concerned that accidents would be limited within their fences, so they had the opportunity to look at the world more broadly through hat-throwing competitions.
Accurate historical research may not be my area of expertise, so I’ll leave it at this point. In any case, it seems clear that the custom of throwing graduation caps, which did not exist 100 years ago, came from abroad and settled in our country. There may be photos of people throwing their graduation caps before 2000. If any of you reading this article know of such a photo, I would appreciate it if you could leave a comment.
▶Then why do we throw away our graduation caps? As a photojournalist, I also went to cover several graduation ceremonies held in downtown Seoul last February. It’s a bit awkward to write about the solemn image of a graduation ceremony in a newspaper, so I try to find special scenes here and there, but I often can’t find anything special. In that case, we ask some students to excuse themselves and throw their graduation caps into the sky. It’s a staged photo. Some people may ask whether photojournalists can direct, but my standard is that if it is unavoidable, ‘if it is not a situation that causes harm to anyone,’ they do so. One reason may be to create the appearance of throwing a graduation cap because you don’t want to take a dull photo. It seems to be trying to convey the meaning of getting rid of the difficult times of three years of high school, which were difficult for entrance exams, and four years of college, where you studied hard to advance into society. I also want to talk about the hope that a bright future awaits them. So, the background of these photos looks better with a blue sky rather than a cloudy sky. However, these photos are not often published in newspapers anymore.
Come to think of it, special scenes at graduation ceremonies are also popular. When digital cameras first became popular, scenes of commercial photographers waiting for customers seemed to be published quite often in newspapers. And before that, there was a time when we would put a square hat on our parents or spouse and take a picture to thank them for helping us study.
▶ Today, we looked at a photo of four graduates wearing square hats and staring at the camera at the graduation ceremony at Ewha Hakdang in Seoul 100 years ago. What do you see in the picture? What do you think about the photo of the graduation cap being thrown? I want to feel your gaze in the comments.
Reporter Byun Young-wook cut@donga.com
2024-03-23 18:09:59