Joo Myung Duck is a first-generation photographer began his career with documentary photography that sincerely depicted the scenery and lives of ordinary people in Seoul during the 1960s and 1970s. During this period, when new cultures sprouted from the ruins of the Korean War, Joo focused on unremarkable subjects sheltering in low places and recorded their photographic images—orphanages, mix-raced children from the war, traditional Korean homes, rice paddies and fields, alleyways, people wearing traditional hanbok, street vendors, and other categories of images all portrayed the honest and vivid beauties of their everyday protagonists. As curator Lee Young-Chul, who introduced Joo’s photography in the 2nd SEOUL in MEDIA FOOD, CLOTHING, SHELTER wrote, “The images of his monochrome landscape photos of mountains appear in the form of an infinitely fluctuating ‘ensemble of nerve fibers.’ Conceptual landscapes in our heads quickly fade away in front of his work.”
