BLACK BOX: MEMORY OF THE COLD WAR IMAGES

Black Box (( (1) Flight recording device(etc.); (2) Sealed automatic seismometer (to detect underground nuclear detonation); (3) Device with unknowable content))

The term ‘black box’ is usually used to refer to a device that faithfully records everything that has transpired, but because of this very faithfulness, the contents of this device cannot be known.  In 1993, the then President Yeltsin of Russia handed over to then President Roh Tae-woo of Korea the black box retrieved from the Korean Air plane that had been shot down by a fighter plane of the former Soviet Union.  Although it was later reported that the black box was void of any content, nobody knew it at the time.  The hand-over was captured on film and carried in newspapers and magazines.  No one could imagine after only seeing the newspaper photographs that the box was empty, but reports written afterwards confirmed the fact.  A black box also conjures up other similar notions: camera, television, theater, caskets, dreams, prison…

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-> BLACK BOX: MEMORY OF THE COLD WAR IMAGES catalogue.pdf

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1998  Alienation and Assimilation, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago

1997  Black Box : Memory of the Cold War Images, Kumho Museum, Seoul