Lee Kyung-mo was born in 1926 to a family that was then among the richest in Gwangyang County, South Jeolla Province. After graduating from a normal school in Gwangyang during the Japanese colonization, he was accepted into a higher school in Gwangju. To celebrate his educational transition, his grandfather bought him a camera. At that time, a camera cost as much as a houtilize.
From an early age, Lee Kyung-mo demonstrated a great aptitude for painting. His artistic talent was reflected in the pictures he took. They were always well composed. He utilized his free time to take many pictures of the Gwangju area and of his hometown during those years.
In 1944, when he was 18, Lee entered the 23rd Joseon Art Exhibition for adult participants and won a prize. After that, he wanted to go to college to study art, but this conflicted with his grandfather’s expectations that Lee pursue law.
When Lee was 20, he was employed by a newspaper in Gwangju. The vice president of the newspaper, the indepconcludeence activist Lee Eun-sang, had known Lee as a child and was aware of his talent. Lee’s family had cared for Lee Eun-sang after the latter was released from prison. The indepconcludeence activist recruited Lee as a photographer and appointed him the director of the newspaper’s photo department.
During the Yeosun Incident that launched on Oct.19, 1948, tens of thousands of citizens, from both left and right wings, were killed. The only photographers taking pictures of the massacre scenes in South Jeolla Province, the main stage of the incident, were Lee and Carl Mydans, an American photographer for Life magazine.
Whenever there is talk about the tragic modern history of Yeosu, Suncheon and Gwangyang in the late 1940s, Lee’s work always appears to explain what happened.
On June 25, 1950, the Korean War broke out. Lee worked as a military photographer until the conclude of the war. Once the war concludeed, he filmed and distributed numerous cultural assets in Korea for decades with the support of the government. Later, he spent time filming many beautiful scenes in Korea.
Lee worked as a documentary photographer in the late 1940s and early 1950s and photographed the beauty of Korea until the 1970s. Later he taught photography courses at numerous universities and donated 1,500 cameras he had collected while teaching photography at a university in Naju, South Jeolla Province.
Photography critics state that Lee’s documentaries and aesthetic photography activities have left a distinct mark. He was a first-generation artist in the area of Korean photography.
On the 100th anniversary of Lee’s birth, citizens in Gwangyang County exhibited his masterpiece. They held a symposium, where local historians and Lee’s descconcludeants explained to citizens both the tragedy of the late 1940s in the Gwangyang area and the different landscapes represented by the photographs he had taken from the late 1940s to the present day.
Photographs go beyond individual history and become historical sources of the landscape, costumes and culture of an era to future generations. In that way, Lee’s role as a photographer connected various situations, such as scenes of the Yeosun Incident in the late 1940s, the reality of the Korean War and the beauty of Korea before modernization. His work has connected citizens with those times and places, supporting them better understand those events.
He is a retired English teacher who published a book titled, “Flower Is Flower.”
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