Dr. Michael W. Hurt is a photographer and professor living, shooting, and researching in Seoul. He received his doctorate from UC Berkeley’s Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies. He also started Korea’s first street fashion blog in 2006 and published the first English language book about Korean Fashion in 2009. He researches youth, street fashion, and digital subcultures in Seoul while lecturing on Cultural Theory and Art History. His present research focuses on using the camera to access and document emergent digital subcultures in Korea, including the political economy of the “pay model” on Korean Instagram, Seoul’s drag underground, and the youth-centric LGBTQ movement in Korea.
Our conversation focused on 90s fashion and culture, street photography, women as subjects/objects of fashion, heroin chic and 퇴폐미, Korean feminism, cultural appropriation, 부캐 vs 본캐, and Korean Studies as an academic field.
Michael's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seoulstreetstudios/
Michael's magazine: https://medium.com/seoulacious-magazine
9 minute: https://www.instagram.com/9minuite/
Discussion Outline
0:00 Early Days: Jeju in the 1990s
15:00 90s vibes and street culture
26:35 Street photography
39:00 Women as the subject and object of fashion
52:20 Photo editing vs reality: ethnography
59:24 Heroin chic and 퇴폐미
1:12:00 School girl concepts and smoking
1:22:40 Korean models and prices
1:36:13 Korean feminism
1:40:04 9 minute (구분)
1:48:36 Cultural appropriation
2:02:52 Korean Studies and Academia
2:14:45 부캐 vs 본캐
2:27:13 The perfect Confucian scholar
2:30:34 Hallyu: dead or alive?
2:35:15 Misunderstandings on Korea
2:36:50 The LGBTQ community in Korea
2:42:45 Race in Korea
Korea Deconstructed by David Tizzard
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