“It is said that history repeats itself,

but such metaphor is meaningless for documentary photography.

A fact or an image, once gone, can never be recreated.”

_ Kuwabara Shisei

The Cheonggyecheon Museum presents Looking Back on Cheonggyecheon, 1965-1968,

showcasing the photographs of Kuwabara Shisei which vividly capture the daily lives of

the people living in the shantytown along Cheonggyecheon Stream in the 1960s.

In the words of Kuwabara, “You can go back and recapture what is beautiful and pretty,

but you cannot recapture a moment in history.”

This exhibition explores candid moments in the daily lives of the people along Cheonggyecheon

more than 50 years ago. We hope it will provide an opportunity to look back on Cheonggyecheon

as an urban space of Seoul, and re-evaluate the photographs of Cheonggyecheon as historical records.