Allen Blair Thompson, my grandfather, served two tours as a helicopter mechanic with the U.S. Army in South Korea from 1957-1961. Though an engineer by trade, Blair had an interest in art. My mother tells me he liked painting and sketching the most, but he switched over to photography in South Korea likely because it was more practical to transport a camera and 35mm film rolls than a paint palette and canvas. He put the equipment to use, and documented the ASCOM City military complex and surrounding Bupyeong District of Incheon during his first tour. I'm guessing the Seoul photos were taken during a trip to the nearby capital at this time. Photographs from the Gyeonggi Province likely came from his second tour while he was stationed near Uijeongbu. He brought these 35mm slides back to the U.S. and stored them for roughly 30 years until his passing. Then my grandmother preserved them for another 30 years before giving them to me in 2018, an act that led to me starting Korean Image Archive.
An additional 100 photographs from his collection will premiere in the feature-length film Traces.
