Seoul Airport 1951 - 1953

This photograph of Seoul Airport, by David Ketel, shows large silver airplanes sitting on the ground. It's a small image, only 5cm by 5cm, which is quite intimate, don’t you think? I can imagine him there, squinting in the sunlight, trying to capture the scale of these massive machines, these birds of war. What was he thinking? Was he just documenting a scene, or was he trying to say something about power, about travel, about the strange mix of the mundane and the monumental that you find in an airport? Look at the way the light hits the metal, reflecting the sky. And there’s a jeep, almost like a toy, parked nearby, reminding us of the human scale of things. Ketel isn’t telling us what to think, but simply showing us what was there, inviting us to bring our own thoughts and feelings to the scene. It’s a quiet moment, captured in a tiny frame, but it speaks volumes.