Johsel Namkung

born South Korea, 1919; died Seattle, Washington, 2013

BiographyJohsel Namkung was born in Korea. He came to the United States in 1947. By the late 1950s Namkung and his wife were deeply involved in the local art scene. She ran a Capitol Hill gallery for five years, and the couple counted Mark Tobey, Paul Horiuchi and George Tsutakawa among their lifelong friends. Namkung found work as an interpreter for Northwest Airlines and from 1962-1982, he was a medical photographer at the University of Washington Medical School. Though he photographed continuously, he exhibited his art photography only intermittently (his first solo show was at the Henry Art Gallery in 1966). The Seattle Asian Art Museum had a retrospective of his work in 2006. Namkung focused particularly on the Northwest landscape creating lush, primarily color, images.

[source: Seattle times obituary by Michael Upchurch, July 27, 2013]

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