Frank A. Kunishige

Frank Kunishige was born in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan, Kunishige and moved to San Francisco in 1896. He graduated from Effingham College of Photography in Illinois in 1911. In 1917 he moved to Seattle and worked for the Edward Curtis and Ella McBride Studios and for the Bon Marche and Frederick & Nelson department stores. Kunishige introduced the use of photographic printing paper made out of Japanese rice paper known as "textura tissue." As a charter member of the Seattle Camera Club, he became well-known for his photographs of female nudes and his "technical ability to capture a mood of delicacy using subtle gradations of tonality."

[biography courtesy David F. Martin]