| Publication |
2013.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
North Korea puzzles many observers. Mostly, it is referred to as the most isolated country in the world, being a timeless mystery, enigma, or terra incognita. While these characterizations reveal the presupposition of a genuine void of knowledge concerning the assessment of North Korean state affairs (however, without preventing scholarship from producing, compiling and depending on information regarding North Korea), they also point to the significance in filling this knowledge gap. The article argues that images play an important role in this operation and provides a discussion of selected photographic essays and single images depicting North Korea. Images work; they do something by evoking a particular perspective of what is shown in them allowing only specific kinds of seeing. Relating the viewer and the viewed in ways that determine what or who is (in)visible, images create boundaries and difference which, in turn, affects who "we" and "they" are.
|