Koreaans meisje in klederdracht 1951 - 1953

David Ketel made this small photo called ‘Korean girl in national costume,’ but when it was taken we don’t know. The image is dominated by the bright colors of the little girl’s Hanbok. You can see it’s been carefully put together, color by color, with so much attention to detail. I wonder what Ketel was thinking when he took the photo. Was he thinking about her? About Korea? About the tension between the traditional and the modern? I imagine he had to work quickly to get the picture, without posing her. The fact that this is a photograph, not a painting, makes me think about its relation to painting. How might you "paint" a photograph? What kind of colors, what kind of gestures would you use? I keep thinking about the saturated color and what it communicates to me. Artists are always inspired by each other. We look at each other's work and learn from it. We take ideas and make them our own. And, in the process, we create something new.