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• Issue #282
• Article

The Jerry Uelsmann Memorial Hall at its museum in Gimpo, just outside Seoul, South Korea. (Photo courtesy of Maggie Taylor)

Museum Hanmi has opened the Jerry Uelsmann Memorial Hall at its museum in Gimpo, just outside Seoul, South Korea. At the center of the Memorial Hall is a meticulous reconstruction of Uelsmann's Gainesville studio and darkroom. His six enlargers, darkroom equipment, books, artwork, and many of the wonderfully strange objects that filled his working spaces have been installed there. Walking into it feels uncannily familiar to those who knew the original.

Perhaps most importantly, the darkroom is not simply a historical reconstruction. It is a working darkroom, and Museum Hanmi plans to use it for educational programs, introducing new generations of photographers and artists to traditional wet-darkroom printing.

At the center of the Memorial Hall is a meticulous reconstruction of Uelsmann's Gainesville studio and darkroom. His six enlargers, darkroom equipment, books, artwork, and many of the wonderfully strange objects that filled his working spaces have been installed there. (Photo courtesy of Maggie Taylor)

Maggie Taylor, photographer and former spouse, had attended the opening, and told me, "I think Jerry would have been especially pleased to know that his darkroom will continue to be a place where photographs are made and where the process can be taught."

Jerry Uelsmann's relationship with Museum Hanmi dates back more than two decades, through exhibitions, visits to Korea, and the close friendships he developed with people at the museum and in the Korean photographic community. That long relationship makes the location of the Memorial Hall in Korea especially meaningful.

Taylor told us, "It was very moving to see the care that the Museum Hanmi has taken to preserve not only Jerry's photographs, but also something much harder to preserve: the environment, tools, and process that were such an important part of how he worked."