그리피스 컬렉션에 소장되어 있는 한국 근대 사진자료의 학술적 가치에 대한 고찰

The Significance of Korean Photos in the William Elliot Griffis Collection at Rutgers University

In any historical research, visual materials are of great evidential value as they enable one to reconstruct the past and to build connections to the present. Given the present situation that, because of a dearth of visual materials, visually reconstructing Korea of one century ago is particularly challenging, we believe introducing photographic material in the William Elliott Griffis Collection is of great importance, especially when almost all previous studies deal with Griffis’ publications without the benefit of visual aids. William Elliot Griffis (1843~1928) graduated from Rutgers University in 1869, and went to Japan to participate in the Japanese government’s Westernization project for three years (1871~1874) by teaching natural sciences and helping to organize education in Echizen (later named Fukui). Upon returning to the U.S., he became one of the few Western authorities on American-Japanese relations, East Asian history and culture, and Korea through his numerous publications, including The Mikado’s Empire (1876), Japanese Fairy World (1880), Asiatic History: China, Corea, and Japan (1881), Corea: The Hermit Nation (1882), Corea, Within and Without (1885), The Religions of Japan (1895), Japanese Nation in Evolutions: Steps in the Progress of a Great People (1907), China’s Study in Myth, Legend, Art, and Annals (1910), The Unmannerly Tiger and Other Korean Tales (1911), A Modern Pioneer in Korea: the Life Story of Henry G. Appenzeller (1912), Korean Fairy Tales (1922), etc. Although Griffis did not travel to Korea until 1927, he collected on all subjects that concerned East Asia, including articles, pictures and artifacts relating to Korean between 1874 and his death in 1928. The library at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, holds the William Elliot Griffis Collection, papers received as family gifts after his death in 1928. It is described as “over 120 cubic feet in size, including journals, manuscripts, printed materials, photographs, family papers, and scrapbooks, correspondence and ephemera” (Rutgers University Libraries Information brochure). Portions of the William Elliot Griffis Collection were published as Japan through Western Eyes: Manuscript Records of Traders, Travellers, Missionaries and Diplomats, 1853~1941. Parts 2~5. Adam Matthew Publications, 2000. The Korean materials within the Collection, however, have been neither cataloged in detail nor their significance in and possible contributions to Korean Studies have been fully explored. The Korean materials in the collection provides a unique opportunity to Korean Studies researchers as it contains invaluable photographs, articles and personal letters in the section designated as “Unprocessed Materials.” This section comprises of four boxes of Korean Photographs, many of which are part of series published for sale and whose photographers are unidentified, as well as Korean pamphlets. For this study, we examined all 586 photos in the collection that portray Korean landscape, customary rites, historical relics, lifestyles and city scenes, and buildings dating from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. We classified the photos into seven categories of (1) four ceremonial occasions, (2) wars, (3) life styles, (4) the royal families and palaces, (5) cities and buildings, (6) religion, and (7) others. Simple notes handwritten by Griffis on the back of photos helped us in identifying the contents and in imagining the stories behind some of the pictures. In order to identify photos that have never been made public, we manually combed through available publications.