Yook Myong Shim (b. 1933) received his bachelor’s degree from the Department of English Literature at Yonsei University and received his master’s degree in aesthetics and art history from Hongik University. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions including “Trend of Contemporary Photography,” “10 Most Distinguished Photographers,” and “Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary Photographers.” He also wrote Discourse on Global Photographers and History of Contemporary Korean Art (Photography section, co-authored). He was the recipient of Silver Award at DongA International Photography Exhibition and Special Selection Award at DongA Photography Contest. He served as a professor of the Department of Photography at Seoul Institute of the Arts.
Yook Myong Shim has sought to contain the Korean ethos in his photographs. These series are the outcomes of his will: Baekmin, Ordinary People in the 1970s; “Black Sand Bathing” and “Jangseung Totem Poles” in the 1980s; and the “Portraits of Artis ” series that has been ongoing since the 1970s. To create the series “Baekmin, Ordinary People,” his way of referring to people without rank, he traveled the entire country to take photographs of people lived in this region for a long time whose faces frankly convey the hardship they have experienced. “Black Sand Bathing” is a series of photographs of mothers who bury themselves in sand heated in the hot summer sun to relieve chronic pains. The photographs in this series shot over three times, even shows a process in which the sand the mothers once buried themselves in turns into a playground for summer vacationers. Yook says, “The success of a photographer depends on whether or not the subjects open their hearts to him.” He has contemplated on various lives of the people living on this land and started dialogues between one heart and another. As a result, Yook could capture the essence of beings after his deep meditations and epiphanies. Since the late 1990s, he has taken photographs on his pilgrimages to Buddhist countries.
