Seoul Airport 1951 - 1953

This photograph, Seoul Airport, was taken by David Ketel, we don't know exactly when. What strikes me is the colour. It's almost entirely without colour. The whole composition is muted and pale, reminiscent of a watercolour painting, and this delicate, soft palette creates a strange and unsettling effect. The light is flat, almost without shadow. The surface of the planes, like the surface of the photograph, looks almost metallic, reflecting the light. There's a tension between the weight of the metal and the lightness of the colour. And look at the Jeep in the foreground, how the colour seems to leach out of it, bleaching the green. The muted palette reminds me a little of Giorgio Morandi’s still life paintings, which also use a limited range of colours to create a sense of quiet contemplation. Ultimately, like Morandi, the image invites us to see the world in a new way, to find beauty in the everyday and to appreciate the subtle nuances of light and colour.