Terry Bennett Collection of Early Korea Photographs

This collection of approximately 4000 images may well be the most important in private or institutional hands. Assembled by the photo-historian and writer Terry Bennett over a period of 40 years, Korea's visual history (1866-1920) is represented in approximately 40 multiple-plate panoramas, 32 albums, more than 60 groups or series, and over 350 individual photographs, postcards, and photographic publications – an unprecedented collection in a rare field. Highlights of this collection include works by Felice Beato, Herbert Ponting, Ueno Hikoma, Ichida Sota I, Thomas Child, John Thomson and many others. Of particular note are 2 rare albums by Felice Beato documenting the US Naval Expedition to Kanghwado in 1871, and comprising what is thought to be the most comprehensive surviving photographic record of this expedition. Other highlights include a large seven-plate panorama of Pusan and others of Chemulpo, Seoul, and Asan. The scope of the collection provides an invaluable visual resource for the study of Korean history. It contains a significant group of portraits and carte-de-visite studies from the earliest known series of photographs of Korea taken during a French military expedition in 1866. It also includes unique portraits of King Kojong, Crown Prince Sejong, and Queen Min as well as scenes from imperial funerals, rare views of Pusan and Ginsen, and images of daily life and customs. Foreign industrial, missionary and military interests are also represented: American gold mining and engineering efforts, in particular, the Seoul-Chemulpo Railway of 1897-99; photographs taken by the future Bishop of Korea during the 1890s, and an important photograph of one of the few French missionaries to survive a mass execution in 1866, Father Felix-Claire Ridel; several groups of photographs by British naval officers in Port Hamilton, Seoul and Kanghwa: others taken from German, French and American warships; and the Japanese march into Seoul in 1904 including Marquis Ito’s entrance into the city.