01.Dec.2015
In Editorial
24 hours in North Korea
North Korea was in my consciousness early this year. Some friends went running a race and a few photographers traveled on a 24-hour mission in and out and captured what they could.
The runners were there for the marathon. Due to Ebola fears, the race was canceled at one stage and borders are closed. Wisely the race was then allowed to proceed but the damage was done and many travel organizers were left with excess flight capacity. In order to use up these otherwise empty seats, the tour organizers offered a unique 24-hour visit to Pyongyang for a ridiculously low price – a deal too good to be true for some photographers.
Raphael Olivier & Shiraz Randeria, independently took advantage of a unique kamikaze run into the deep North. Landing in the wee hours and having a full day to shoot then return to China the evening. Such a cursory visit makes it hard to gain any real depth, and as Shiraz admits, any photographer or tourist invariably gets shown the same locations so it is difficult to get any point of difference. Most end up getting up similar images that tourists can take with their iPhones.
Raphael Olivier captured heroic monuments, and peaceful, uniform cityscapes of utopian perfection. While drab and advertising free, the scenes are everything you’d expect from what you have heard about North Korea. Portraits have been snapped as though a glimpse into a rare society, however makes me wonder whether these are all actors carefully positioned to create an impression on the visiting lens. If Legoland was to create sets of communist era cities, this is how it would look.
Shiraz Randeira’s mis-en-scene is filled with subterfuge and one gets the sense of being part of an intricate spy thriller where his images are the clues to solve a mystery. Captured as though they were film stills, a vintage Mercedes, a drab hotel room, silhouetted architecture and a solitary flag are just enough clues to provide a sense of place, but we are not quite sure where.
Randeira was well aware that all photographers who got to North Korea mostly get shown the same places without variation and hence many will walk away with similar images. Fortunately Randeira shoots in a style that precludes this happening with his own images, that are characteristically taken with a single point of focus and short depth of field, layering curtains, objects, buildings and people and light.
While North Korean politics is playing mind games with itself, there seems to be increasing opportunities for traveling into the forbidden paradise. However, beyond the well-trodden path of these already quite familiar sights, how long will it be before we can really get an expose of what North Korea is really like?
