Margaret Bourke-White

flush-mounted to heavy board, credit and LIFE assignment numbers in ink, captioned, printing notations, and a stamp with 'Allied Graphic Arts - Family of Man' in pencil, and annotations in red crayon, on the reverse, framed, 1952 (Portrait of Myself, p. 357; Goldberg, pl. 52; Rubin, p. 85)

Originally from the collection of Margaret Bourke-White

This early print, on paper with a slight surface sheen, is in generally good condition. There is a slightly warm tonal shift around the subjects' heads. When examined in raking light, the following are visible: linear impressions in the upper left, upper right, and lower right corners that do not break the emulsion; a number of scratches throughout, the most significant of which is in the center of the image near the mother's head; and faint silvering in the dark areas.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Margaret Bourke-White considered this image one of her most important photographs. The story of the reunion of a mother and the child she thought dead has its own chapter in her autobiography, Portrait of Myself, where she wrote,

'In a whole lifetime of taking pictures, a photographer knows that the time will come when he will take one picture that seems the most important of all.  And you hope that everything will be right . . . Most of all, you hope that the emotion you are trying to capture will be a real one, and will be reflected on the faces of the people you are photographing' (p. 356).

The present print comes originally from Margaret Bourke-White's personal collection.

Sent by LIFE to supplement its Korean War coverage, Bourke-White was interested in approaching the story of the Korean people and conflict from a human interest angle.  She had been working on a photo essay for some time, but felt that an image that would pull the story together was missing—an image that would 'illustrate visually, and I hoped dramatically, the cleavage in a family torn apart by the war of ideas' (Portrait of Myself, p. 349).

A young man she met at police headquarters, Nim Churl-Jin, had been recruited by a communist Red Youth Group and had gone into the mountains to fight.  Disillusioned with the Communists' empty promises, he had fled.  His mother had given him up for dead.  Sensing that this might be her sought-for opportunity for human drama, Bourke-White requested permission from the police to take him home to his family. 

Bourke-White accompanied Churl-Jin and a police captain on the Journey by Jeep, and when they reached his village, they found Churl-Jin's mother was absent, having gone to visit relatives five miles away.  They went in search of her, and while riding along the track, Churl-Jin suddenly jumped out, and Bourke-White followed.  He ran across a brook and up a hill.  Stumbling and desperately trying to keep her cameras dry, she described the moment in her autobiography,

'I don't know what angel watched over me that day.  If we had been three minutes earlier or three minutes later, we would have missed it . . . Far ahead of us, coming through the rice fields on a narrow path, was a woman in white.  She threw away her walking stick and started to run.  By the time I got there, the two were in each other's arms, and she had her hands on his cheeks.  She was saying, "It's a dream.  It can't be true.  My son is dead.  My son has been dead for two years.  It is only a dream."  And Churl-Jin was saying, "no, Mother, it is not a dream.  I am really Churl-Jin."  And the two sank to the ground then, and she began rocking him back and forth in her arms.  She was singing him a lullaby.  Her son had come home' (Portrait of Myself, p. 356).