Born in 1940, Joo Myung Duck is a renowned figure in contemporary Korean photography known for his contribution to documenting Korean society and people in the 1960s and the 1970s. Joo is also one of the nation's most important fine art photographers who has been experimenting with abstraction in photography since the late 1980s.
Joo Myung Duck was born in 1940 in Hwanghae Province, now part of North Korea. His family moved south shortly after the end of the Japanese occupation in 1945. While studying history at Kyung-Hee University in Seoul, he engaged in a great deal of mountain climbing and taking photographs. His first one-person show, Mr. Holt's Orphanage in Seoul in 1966, caused a sensation. For several years from 1969 he worked for Monthly Joong-Ang as a photojournalist, contributing numerous photo essays.