Posted on 12/23/2012 3:54:51 AM PST by nuconvert
Snapshots from a secret state: Panoramic pictures of North Koreans at work and play give an extraordinary glimpse of everyday life
Award-winning photographer David Guttenfelder makes frequent trips to notoriously secretive North Korea trying to capture the country as accurately as possible for outsiders. Here he describes capturing this set of photos which offer a rare glimpse into the everyday life of its citizens... My window on North Korea is sometimes, quite literally, a window - of a hotel room, the backseat of a car, a train.
Fleeting moments of daily life present themselves suddenly, and they are opportunities to show a side of the country that is entirely at odds with the official portrait of marching troops and tightly coordinated pomp that the Pyongyang leadership presents to the world. In April, I was part of a group of international journalists that traveled by train to the launch site for this year's first, failed rocket test.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
The people at the swimming pool are either very physical fit or reaching into overweight, with one gal that would be considered obese here.
These seem to be staged. People uncomfortably huddling around a diving board, empty rooms with one or two people in them. The land is desolate, there weren’t any “lush” pictures. And the empty bottling plant...
My dad fled Poland after WWII, and that was his favorite expression. I got to see Poland just after the Berlin Wall came down, and it looked much like this. It's hard to imagine the overwhelming, gray bleakness, and how everything was broken down and held together by duck tape.
Over time, there have been more and more opportunities to leave the showplace capital, Pyongyang, and mingle with the people.
But they are usually wary of foreigners and aware that they too are being watched.
In my photography, I try to maintain a personal point of view, a critical eye, and shoot with a style that I think of as sometimes-whimsical and sometimes-melancholy.
My aim is to open a window for the world on a place that is widely misunderstood and that would otherwise rarely be seen by outsiders.
I think he is an exceptional photographer but that last sentence at least to me shows that he has at least been somewhat seduced by communism.
I read the entire article and he is pretty careful not to be at all critical of the regime. He obviously can not be openly critical if he ever wants to go back but he does not really make any mention of the poverty, starvation or oppressive conditions that the common people endure.
Perhaps because he is always shadowed (controlled) by his minder he does not see how the common people are living. It is that ‘misunderstood comment that bothers me.
There is also this:
I hope these images help people to develop their own understanding of the country, one that goes beyond the point-counterpoint presented by Pyongyang and Washington. And maybe they can help create some sort of bridge between the people of North Korea and the rest of the world.
This reporter some how thinks that if Washington would just understand what a wonderful country Korea is things will be alright.
Maybe he is just trying to make friends in the North Korean government or maybe he is a communist at heart.
What an idyllic place to live. I am sure if we would only follow all of Obama’s precepts and implement every last one of his policy initiatives, Americans could be as lucky, create an equally perfect society and live wonderful lives.
Yep, that’s the way to go comrade.
I got a post from MaxMax but I guess he missed the “/sarc” at the end of my post and actually believed that I was serious. Oh well, some people don’t read to the end.
All joking aside, we are in really deep “do-—do” this time around and as ignorant as the last 2 generations have become, we are doomed to communism.
This photographer went only where the government wanted him to go. These pictures are essentially propaganda. Even so, they are interesting.
I am pretty sure the average NK citizen would not want his picture taken.
He is only showing what they allow him to. No concentration camps, staved peasants..
Sadly you’re right. Our country is eroding in front of us.And if Obama isn’t stopped or impeached then we have betrayed the men who risked every thing they had to make a new Eden of freedom on the North America continent . They left us every thing legal they could to remedy such a situation and if that were ever to fail they left us something else too, pray God we never have to use it.
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