By Andrew Hamlin
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Johsel Namkung was not at first a photographer by trade.
Born in 1919 in Gwangju, South Korea, Namkung, who died in 2013, immigrated to Seattle in 1947 to attend the University of Washington (UW). He’d previously distinguished himself as a musician in Japan and Korea, studying at the Tokyo Conservatory of Music and winning 1940’s All-Japan Music Contest. He married fellow classical musician Mineko Suematsu in 1941. The couple joined first the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, and then the Seoul Symphony Orchestra, before the move to Washington.
But once in Seattle, in an effort to support his wife and two daughters, Namkung went to work as a language specialist. He also branched out into photography, which would soon become his all-consuming artistic interest.
Namkung studied with photographer Chao-Chen Yang, learning how to process color film, and took a workshop with the famous natural photographer Ansel Adams in 1958. He also found work as a medical photographer at the UW. Over the course of a long career, Namkung became one of the finest and most famous nature photographers in the Pacific Northwest.
Namkung’s photography stretched from the 1950s until the 2000s, explained curator David Martin of the Cascadia Art Museum. On Feb. 12, the museum will open its exhibit of Namkung’s work, “Silent Songs.”
“He was recognized by the region’s top museums with solo exhibitions, the Henry Art Gallery and the Seattle Art Museum,” Martin said. “I admired his use of nature photography to explore abstract sensory relationships that convey common reactions to the atmospheric grandeur of the Northwest landscape.”
A native of Niagara Falls, New York, Martin moved to Seattle in 1986 and made art his life. He owned a Capitol Hill art gallery with his partner between 1986 and 2015, when Martin closed up shop to go work for Cascadia.
Martin first became aware of Namkung in the late 1980s, through Seattle photographer Mary Randlett, but Martin didn’t actually meet Namkung until the early 1990s. The two met through Randlett and UW art professor Gervais Reed.
“He started out with black-and-white compositions that were influenced by his being a classical musician,” Martin said. “They are beautiful, lyrical images that convey a deep love of nature. His later work became increasingly abstract.”
Martin assembled the current exhibition, with the help of Namkung’s widow, Monica Jung. They settled on a three-part structure for “Silent Songs.”
The East Gallery features Namkung’s work, along with paintings and sumi ink drawings by his friends Mark Tobey, George Tsutakawa, John Matsudaira, and Paul Horiuchi. Namkung shared a similar aesthetic with these artists, mostly based on Japanese and Chinese traditions.
Shi Shi Beach Buoy, Olympic National Park, Washington, 1981. Color print 20×24 inches. Courtesy of Monica Namkung and the Namkung Family.
The Main Gallery features Namkung’s earlier black-and-white photographs which have never been seen before, along with a few of his color prints. The dates range from the 1960s to the 1990s.
The West Gallery features Namkung’s portraits of iconic classical musicians produced in the 1970’s, when the musicians were performing with the Seattle Symphony. Some of these musicians include Jessye Norman, Vladimir Horowitz, Itzhak Perlman, and others. Most of Namkung’s subjects signed their photos for him.
Asked to sum up the exhibit, Martin said that he hoped people would take away strong impressions of the man himself, as well as his work.
“Johsel was a lovely, distinguished man with a superb artistic nature,” Martin said. “His work is rarely seen today and so we hope the public will enjoy his work, especially as it is contextualized within the artistic milieu of his time.”
“I also hope that people will recognize the photograph as an equal medium with painting and drawing,” Martin continued. “Photographers like Johsel worked in the darkroom, where the use of film and specialized printing techniques (cropping, toning, paper selection, etc.) distinguished photography as a true art form.”
“Silent Songs: The Photography of Johsel Namkung” runs from Feb. 12—May 18 at the Cascadia Art Museum in Edmonds. Readers can find more information here.