Exhibition Review: DPRK by Philippe Chancel at the Open Eye.

Eli Regan

Exhibition Review

Location: Open Eye Gallery, Wood Street, Liverpool.

Photographer: Philippe Chancel.

Subject: Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK); the last Stalinist regime

Population: Approximately 23 million

Title of the show: DPRK

And so on, and so forth. The facts could continue in this deconstructed manner and they would be a truer reflection of the eerily symmetrical, highly stylised photographs on display by French photographer, Philippe Chancel.

Chancel was born in 1959 at Issy-les-Moulineaux. He became a photographer at 22, after studying Economics and Photography. It was around this time that he started photographing Eastern Europe, in a reportage fashion. Since then, he has developed a very neutral, balanced style for which he is known. He regularly photographs other artists and their studios, such as Anselm Kiefer and Christian Bolstanki. There is certainly some of Bolstanki in ‘DPRK’ (e.g. Dead Swiss), though perhaps less personal and presented on a larger scale, and formally as Lambda (similar to LightJet) prints on Diasec.

As I enter the gallery, I’m instantly overwhelmed by the seamless geometrics. Muffled sounds emanate from the back room so inevitably I venture into it, hoping it does not contain any eminent North Korean officials. The muffled sounds materialise as footage shot by Chancel entitled ‘DPRK sequences’, a 12 minute video, reminiscent of Amber Films. We are presented with the first scene in which the camera stands motionless as a witness, focused on the statue of Kim Il-Sung and slowly people start entering the picture, transfixed and hero-worshipping the statue, celebrating one of the state’s endless ceremonies. We are presented with footage of people crossing a bridge, and after that the focus is on ‘the changing of the guard’, except in this case they are female traffic wardens. Chancel then focuses on another ceremony, one of many state-choreographed dances, with ladies adorned in fuchsia, neon green and yellow garments. There is a man in the middle constantly waving a North Korean flag and as they dance we hear operatic, shrill music, no doubt chanting of the immortality of the Great Leader.

The film plays incessantly and is reflected on a particularly striking photograph, perhaps strategically positioned so you can absorb both realities at once. The photograph in question bears the caption: ‘Lips, uniform, and pin badge’. It is an arresting image, presenting us with a close up view of a female guard, possibly belonging to the army. The lips are full like those of a filmstar and yet she remains embedded in the mass anonymity with uniformed bodies extending beyond her, in a sort of Matrix reality. Chancel reinforces the obscurity of the person presented to us by narrow depth of field, focusing on the badge, highlighting her belonging to DPRK. Periodically, I catch glimpses of the dancers of the film reflected onto ‘Lips, uniform and pin badge’, strengthening the importance of ritual. While this back room is the stronger of the two rooms, my attention turns to what the leaders of the nation would say about this gallery. They would surely turn their nose at such a small, inconsequential gallery. And while the latter is not necessarily my view it does seem ironic that a minute gallery would contain such a grandiose subject like DPRK. There are slight problems in this back room like a damp patch on the ceiling and chairs stacked on a higher part of the subdivided wall, nothing too concerning and yet it this is slightly at odds with such precise, monumental imagery. There are 129 photographic illustrations in the book accompanying the exhibition, of these very few images can comfortably fit in the Open Eye. Having said that, the curator seems to have made the right decision in selecting the photographs we see on display.

In them, we find clear themes emerging, such as surveillance, the aesthetics of horror, idolatry, ritual as commodity and the importance of institution. Still in the back room, we find a photograph of a ‘War Museum Tour Guide, Pyongyang’. A female tour guide stands outside the entrance in an immaculate, military-like uniform. She stands in almost perfect symmetry in relation to both sets of open doors. However, her hands grasp onto each other slightly awkwardly, and there’s a shy, diffident look in her eyes, as she places one foot somewhat further than the other. Even though we can see her whole person, she remains as anonymous as the girl from ‘Lips, uniform and pin badge’, another machine cog employed by DPRK to encourage institutionalism and idolatry, as perpetuated by the state.

To gain some idea of how extreme this totalitarian regime is, you only have to log on the Korean press website and read some of nonsense: ‘They are full of optimism and firm resolution to perform feats in the hopeful New Year’. In reality, 2006 was the 11^th year of food shortages in North Korea. Another article declares: “The great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung is immortal. The participants paid humble reverence to the statue”. In many of the images Chancel took, framed pictures of Kim Il Sung (d. 1994) and his son, present leader Kim Jong Il, are displayed, framed equally and positioned next to each other, like an all pervasive diptych, existing even on their underground carriages. Frankly, I am disturbed by ‘DPRK’. ‘DPRK’ and Chancel’s style of photographing seem the perfect marriage. Other Chancel subjects (including his London pictures) suffer from being too neutral and dispassionate. ‘DPRK’ is ideally rendered by Chancel, in that he manages to at both please DPRK’s officials and propaganda and horrify the rest of the world by confirming our suspicions and prejudices against this dictatorship. His pictures therefore exist in an awkward duality and irony that would have escaped other straight documentary practitioners. We are as horrified by what we see as by what we cannot see. Chancel himself says: ‘In North Korea I often had the impression of being in an immense open-air museum of communism.’ His impression of course is not a mirage at all, but North Koreans’ everyday reality. Chancel also remarks: ‘I constantly felt that I was living in a non-reality, a virtual world straight from video games’. I can relate to that in the photographs, but as I said before I constantly remind myself that this is their truth (or not, depending on the propaganda they are relentlessly being spoon fed). One photograph that stands out as being from ‘video games’ is ‘Singing rehearsal, Children’s palace’. Girls in uniforms of white, blue and red (uniform also worn by their Cuban contemporaries) sit rigidly while a fellow classmate dances. In the background swans are painted into the brick, flying and I can’t help equating the girls with these ‘bricked swans’, unable to flower, unlike the kitsch flowery floor. This interpretation might be ridiculous in itself, but it is the only photograph that can be read in such a way.

Another photograph stands out for its seemingly normal subject matter.

You can be forgiven for thinking that ‘Avenue’ or ‘Workers erecting scaffolding’ (as entitled in the book) has a more humanistic aspect to it than the other photographs on display. In reality it serves to confirm this autocracy more than most pictures. It shows the workers looking towards the sky, one in particular smiling, all of them transfixed as if smiling to their Leader, holding a rope. Of course, they are only working, but this is crucial to the communist regime. They are symbols, in the same way that Rosenthal’s victorious American soldiers erecting their flag were in the iconic picture. The gray smog that is the sky is ever present in every picture appears here too, and while people go about their business, I focus on a sign, of a man descending stairs. This is a contrast to the men looking up, but is more suggestive of their reality with no hope of ascending ranks.

In another photograph, we spy a tasteless mural, another permanent advertisement of the regime. In ‘The Grand Theatre, Pyongyang’, the overly sentimental mural resembles a sort of Sound of Music theme with military, dancers and children celebrating the regime with flags, while below real kids, women and men go about their daily lives. This mural is yet another reminder of the all pervasive despotic regime. Chancel contrasts the bright and brash mural with its drab surroundings and reminds us again of the human element subjugated under DPRK.

DPRK is the last Stalinist regime on Earth. Until it was occupied by Japan in 1905 as a result of the Russian-Japanese War, Korea was an independent kingdom. After World War II, Korea was divided with the northern half becoming Soviet ruled. It failed to vanquish the South (Republic of Korea- ROK), DPRK’s founder Kim Il-Sung took on ‘Juche’- a course of action meaning self-reliance as a counteraction to Soviet and Chinese influence. In 1994, after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il became his father’s successor.  Since the mid-nineties DPRK ‘has relied heavily on international aid to feed its population while continuing to expend resources to maintain an army of 1 million.’ With a population of 23 million, this seems not only excessive and criminal, but perceived as dangerous by the Western world. Its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes are viewed by the US especially with increasing trepidation.

It is therefore, seemingly miraculous, that Chancel had this unprecedented access to DPRK. I am rather uncomfortable with the thought that photojournalists and film crews risk their lives to secretly document such a closed regime as DPRK is and Chancel, through knowing someone connected to someone in high places in DPRK is granted permission to authenticate its realities (albeit the more superficial realities).

Here we are confronted with an important issue, access. To a certain extent, every photographer has to tackle the issue of access, but Chancel’s dealings with it are more profound than most because it is a subject that for most would be restricted. Chancel says: ‘Photography has always been an excellent pretext for being wherever I was. In North Korea I wasn’t supposed to be there, but I was.’ In Chancel’s statement we recognise an admittance of pure luck. His access is indeed limited, and he was accompanied all the time by guards or ‘guardian angels’ as he jokingly refers to them. As stated earlier, in some way this is the strength of Chancel’s document, that he only records state approved subjects: the dances, parades, ceremonies, monuments, institutions, workers, train stations, most of them presided by statues, murals, or photographs of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. The horrors of the regime are absent except the silent horror of omnipresent orchestration of the citizens’ lives. There is a sense of utter compliance in the people; they are robotic with no room for any other ideology but DPRK’s. In ‘At the Revolution Martyr’s Cemetery’, one of the men carries a chrysanthemum while he looks warily at the camera, as do two of his companions. Chancel has captured in this otherwise unremarkable photograph, a reality less represented in the rest of the work. Those glowering looks speak of prohibition and the regarding of anyone foreign as alien, a spy, objectionable.

In this exhibition more than most we are challenged with the subject of state museums containing history and what this represents. The Open Eye Gallery no matter how small is state funded and as such is an emblem of the UK, just as much as its museums are North Korean symbols. In the book accompanying the exhibition there are far more photographs and one of these shows a sound library. I think this print should have been included in the exhibition. In the front of the room we notice the omnipresent portraits of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong Il. In this picture endless radios/cassette players are shown, with people slouched over, as if giving into historical amnesia. To me, this picture is more chilling than any containing the statue of Kim Il Sung.

With ‘DPRK’ Chancel has created necessarily cold and stark imagery. There is no room for escape from these photographs, as there is no viable escape route for DPRK’s inhabitants. The atmosphere created in the Open Eye is of claustrophobia, and the constant playing of the footage replicates the idea of incessant propaganda and torture chambers. Only two couples (in the thirties/forties) came to see the exhibition in the two hours I was there. Most of the comments didn’t show much engagement with the subject: ‘Nice pictures’ and some joker had signed himself Kim Il Sung and written ‘My beautiful country’. The amount of time spent by both couples was not considerable, a reflection of art as commodity. Derrick Price states: ‘It may seem strange that works created to comment on current events are shown, divorced from any serious text, in the contemplative space of the gallery […] it is also a consequence of a change in intention  on the part of photographers in response to the pressures of the structure of contemporary communication’. While certainly it is necessary to read more in order to understand Chancel’s photographs, he is able to communicate visually very successfully the radically different reality that is DPRK. He focuses in on repeated motifs: statues, the diptych of Kim Il Sung and son, ceremonies, etc to create an almost definitive account of North Korea at the start of the 21^st century. In presenting us with such calculating images we begin to unravel some of what it must be like to live in such a highly ordered, structured state with no room to manouvre. After spending a considerable time absorbing the photographs I decide I should leave soon. By the time I have left the exhibition, however, I am Winston Smith at the end of 1984.