SYNOPSIS
Japanese photojournalist Kuwabara Shisei boards a flight to Korea. Since his first visit in 1964 as a 27-year-old, Shisei has spent six decades documenting the turbulence of Korea's modern history: Cheonggyecheon, military camp towns, the Vietnam War deployment, and democracy movements. Now elderly, he returns, believing this might be his final journey. He carries a mission: to revisit the places and people that defined his life’s work. The film follows the photographer’s footsteps back into the heart of these historical sites.
REVIEW
Kuwabara Shisei is one of Japan’s most renowned photojournalists. Beginning with his groundbreaking work on Minamata disease, his 65-year career has taken him from the battlefields of Vietnam to Afghanistan in the final days of the Soviet Union. Yet the place he photographed most was Korea. First visiting Korea in 1964 to cover the divided nation, Kuwabara went on to cross the Korea Strait more than a hundred times, making Korea the central subject of his life’s work. His images capture pivotal moments in modern Korean history—from protests against the Japan–Korea Treaty and the dispatch of troops to Vietnam, to the U.S. military camptown in Dongducheon and the Gwangju Uprising.
A Portrait of Photography weaves together the explosive immediacy of photojournalism with vivid, powerful recollections, tracing the life of a veteran photographer who has spent his years behind the lens. While charting his career in roughly chronological order, the film also follows Kuwabara in 2023 and 2024 as he returns to Korea, revisiting sites etched in his memory. In landscapes transformed beyond recognition, he continues to raise his camera and press the shutter. Scenes of this quiet persistence are intercut with indelible images from decades past, drawing the audience into a renewed dialogue with history.
“How did the Korea of 1965—a nation where the desire for freedom erupted despite the weight of state oppression—arrive at the present?” the film asks. The answer lies in the beginning, the middle, and the end of A Portrait of Photography.
DIRECTOR'S NOTE
Japanese photographer Shisei Kuwabara, now 89, carries a rare distinction: he was expelled from both South and North Korea. Since 1964, he has devoted six decades to documenting Korea’s turbulent modern history, preserving over 100,000 frames of moments that would otherwise have been lost forever. Enduring taunts like “son of a bitch” and “Jap bastard,” he remained steadfast, driven by a conviction to capture what must be remembered. What, then, did he see? His photographs speak quietly yet unflinchingly, tracing the currents of history that shaped the Republic of Korea and revealing the countless lives—marked by blood and tears—swept along in their flow.
