All of the photos in the current collection are held in five old-fashioned self-adhesive “magnetic” albums, with acetate covers intended to protect the photographs. Even though we now know these types of albums are actually destructive to prints (especially those in color), they are still being sold in stores. Pictures stored in them tend to become brittle and discolored and, because of the adhesive, can be very difficult to remove without serious damage. In these five albums, all of the stickiness has completely disappeared and the prints are now slipping and sliding all over the place, even falling out of the album if I’m not very careful.

All this is to say that I really have no idea in what sort of order the images were originally displayed and that fact, along with the lack of captions, makes it rather challenging as I try to present them in something other than utterly random order. In the first album alone I have pictures of military and civilian vehicles, a wide variety of Korean settings, and all sorts of outdoor scenic images without any hint where they were shot. So at this point, I’ve decided to group the pictures together  by their most obvious subject matter — for the next couple of weeks you’ll see images that I believe show people and locations around South Korea. Later on down the road I’ll focus on the military content and the landscapes. Every page of these albums is a new adventure!

Harvesting some sort of produce — possibly cabbage

A big cuddly bear — but mind those claws!

Per Google, the top part reads, “Songtan Oil Burners”