Terry Bennett Collection of Early Korean Photography
The Collection – An Overview
in excess of 3,600 vintage photographs
Including approximately 40 Panoramas ranging from two-plate to seven-plate views
Some of these panoramas show locations that have yet to be identified.This may be because of the lack of familiarity in the south with the topography of North Korea.
27 Albums containing a total of approximately 2400 photographs
59 Groups of images containing a total of approximately 1000 photographs
Approximately 300 miscellaneous photographs of portraits and scenery
In addition the collection has some 80 postcards and 25 items (original engravings from periodicals etc) featuring published photographs
Included are images from both the north and the south of the country.
Included is a photographic portrait with a contemporary German inscription beneath which translated reads: ‘The Murdered Queen.’
This collection of nineteenth century and pre-colonial Korean photography may be the largest in institutional or private hands.
The collection contains some attributed 1866 carte de visite images of Koreans taken in Korea. A recent acquisition now confirms this date making them the earliest known photographs taken in Korea. Previously this was thought to apply to the 1871 photographs taken by Felix Beato during the US - Korean conflict.
Korean photography is much rarer than Chinese or Japanese. Terry Bennett’s estimate for the relative numbers of surviving Japanese, Chinese and Korean nineteenth-century photographs is in the ratio to 1000:100:1.
