Michael O'Brien:  

Life Michael F. O'Brien lived and worked in Seoul, Korea from August of 1963 to June of 1997. He grew up on a dairy farm in the beautiful wooded hills of northeast Iowa. At age twenty-four he left the corn fields of Iowa for the rice paddies of Korea. Those rice paddies fascinated and excited him with their ever-changing patterns and through them he learned, also, to love the Iowa corn fields he had left behind. He is a retired art and photography teacher from Seoul American High School in Yongsan, 8th U.S. Army, in Seoul, Korea.  Mr. O'Brien's credits include Far-Reaching Fragrance - Photographs of Korea, a collection in coffee table book form of photographic insights into traditional Korea, and a four-person photography exhibition held at Seoul's Doksu Palace contrasting photographs by Westerners at the turn of the century. He has also co-authored a high school photography text, The Photographic Eye - Learning To See With A Camera, adopted by the Department of Defense Dependent Schools and the State of Texas. In the summer of 1984 he was the recipient of a prestigious Kennedy Center Fellowship for Teachers of the Arts and spent three weeks in residence at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. For three years running Mr. O'Brien was an invited exhibiting photographer for the Korea Society Annual Photography Exhibition in Los Angeles and has participated in their traveling show. Over the years he has studied photography with Les Line, the former editor of Audubon Magazine, and Eliot Porter, the grandfather of color photography in America, at the Maine Photographic Workshop in Rockport, Maine. From 1989 to 1997 he was a member of the Governing Council for the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society as well as the cover photographer for thirty-five issues of the quarterly magazine arirang published by the American Women's Club of Korea. He was named DODDS-Korea - Teacher of the Year for 1990 and 1992 and compet...Expand for more