Kim, Soo-nam was a leading documentary photographer in Korea. He left 160,000 cuts of photographs by capturing Korean gut and Asian folk cultures since the late 1970s. Starting with an exhibition to commemorate the publication of the Gut, Korean Shamanic Ritual series (1983), he held many solo exhibitions including Living Mythology ASIA (1999) and Korean Gut: Shamans 1978-1997 (2005). In 2005, he held a solo exhibition titled Shamaninnen in Korea at the Shamanism Now festival in Germany. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Chiang Mai, Thailand in February 2006, and a memorial exhibition Kim Soo-nam Photography-Gut: Spirits was held in 2007.
