In 2015, National Folk Museum of Korea received more than 170,000 donated photographs from the family of Kim Soo Nam(金秀男, 1949~2006). This special exhibition has two aims: to display newly acquired photography collection; and to enhance visitor's understanding of the importance of donations.
From 1970s to 2006 over a period of 30 years, Kim Soo Nam took a series of pictures of gutpan(scenes of Korean shamanic rituals) across the country and in many other Asian countries. He not only captured those exciting and precious moments during the ritual, but laughed and cried with the people he photographed.
Sometimes Kim, putting down his camera for a moment, tried to understand feelings and thoughts of both people who invited shamans and shamanic practitioners; to know reasons people ask shamans to perform gut(Korean shamanic rituals) and roles the rituals played in people's lives.
This exhibit presents themes relating to life and death that Kim wanted to convey through his images. Hope his photographs remind us of the idea of life and death that we forget altogether while being preoccupied with the hustle and bustle of our daily routines.

[Prologue]
About Kim Soo Nam

[Section 1]
Beginning of Life
"While death is the end of life, it is also the beginning of life"
an interview with KCTV Jeju Broadcasting Company in 1999

On gutpan, death is regarded as a starting point of a new life, since the living overcome sorrow and gain strength to carry on, the dead complete earthly lives and reach a transition point where they enter into the afterlife. After all the steps of comforting, bidding farewell and healing are completed, death becomes the beginning of life, not the end.

[Section 2]
Prayer for life
"On the day of danggut (shamanic ritual for the village deity), they flocked to the ceremony and prayed for happiness and wellbeing throughout the year"
from Kim's memo in his book "Seoul Danggut", 1989

There is a saying that gut is eventually for the living. We may observe therefore that a variety of prayers and petitions for life are made on gutpan. People who have their own wishes such as childbirth, good agricultural harvest and abundant fish catch, well-being and longevity gathered together; prepared ritual offerings and then gutpan becomes an arena of many different wishes.

[Section 3]
People at the margins of life
"Shamans exist on the boarder between life and death, they are not only able to comfort the living but to bid farewell to the deceased"
an interview with KCTV Jeju Broadcasting Company in 1999

There is a particular group of people who perform gut on the boarder between life and death. Known as mudang (female shaman), mansin (Korean shamans) and baksu (male shaman), they appease and console people's grief and sorrow through gut. A shaman in Korean culture is a mediator, and healer who touches people's hearts by laughing and crying with their laughter and tears.