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Insuh Yoon, 36, and David Yoon, 39, were in grade school when they emigrated to the United States with their mother from Seoul, South Korea more than 25 years ago.
Their bodies were found early Friday in a Nissan Rogue parked in the garage of a home at the end of a heavily wooded cul-de-sac in Old Tappan near the Rockland County border, multiple responders said.
They'd been in the SUV “more than a few days,” one said.
Both apparently died of carbon monoxide poisoning from burning charcoal in the closed vehicle, a suicide method used in several Asian countries, a law enforcement source said.
A spokesperson for the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office said Monday that no information on the deaths needed to be released from the agency.
The younger brother, Insuh Yoon, was a New York City-based photographer of female nudes. Many were shot in erotic poses, with most holding flowers and some bound by rope or adorned with odd or bizarre props. They’re collected on a website that bears his name.
Several critics publicly admired Yoon’s work, which was exhibited in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Poughkeepsie, Rochester and Los Angeles and also populated some porn sites.
The photos “combine softness and beauty with pure sexuality and elements of kink,” one wrote. They “capture his subjects at their most vulnerable and intimate moments, exhibiting desires and lust in an honest and real way.”
Others said Yoon crossed lines. They pointed to shots – including a series entitled "anonymous erotica" – that show his hands all over models’ bodies.
A brief controversy also erupted when some sex workers accused Yoon of selling photos without permission and “pushing boundaries” during sessions.
In a tragic foreshadowing, Yoon once told an interviewer that he wanted to be “the Anthony Bourdain of erotic photography.”
He said he’d spent a lot of time “very alone” reading books, watching movies constantly and listening to music – including favorites Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead.
SEE: Art Talk: Insuh Yoon (ArtWhore interview)
Yoon said he was drawn to movie making by South Korean film thrillers such as “Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance” and “Old Boy,” along with the highly stylized neo-noir “Sin City” series.
The coming-of-age societal critique “Fight Club” and the romantic drama “The Virgin Suicides,” as well as the works of Kubrick, Lynch and Roger Deakins, also informed an artistic sensibility that evolved into photography, he said.
Yoon told an interviewer that he began exploring New York City by himself, “taking hundreds of pictures a day” and “finding time to create my own work to make up for the void” of a day job that made him miserable after film school.
He got great joy, he said, from “watching people come up making art they believe in is a beautiful thing.”
Yoon said he chose to shoot nudes because there is “nothing as beautiful or as timeless as the female form.”
He incorporated flowers as a signature of sorts because they “will forever be beautiful, as if they are being immortalized at the prime of their beauty.”
SEE: Art Is Sexy (Fluffer Magazine interview with Insuh Yoon)
As for the raw photos, Yoon once said that he believed in “portraying things as they are. I’d rather show real things rather than hide them.
“People are okay with being sexy and looking sexy but being sexual and open about one’s sexual life is something that I think is kept hidden by just about everybody,” Yoon said. “Once doors are closed and you’re in the privacy of your own home your true sexual self is revealed.”
Yoon said his life got turned upside down when his mom was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer in September 2018. His photo exhibitions and publications ended soon after.
Yoon launched a GoFundMe page, explaining that his mother needed constant transfusions and chemotherapy. Although he said he got new health coverage after she lost Medicaid, there were still administrative fees for each treatment, among other costs, he said.
Tragically, his mother’s cancer spread to her spinal cord and brain, Yoon wrote. His goal became “a dignified and beautiful final few weeks/months.”
She died April 6, 2020, he wrote.
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The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is a national network of local crisis centers that provides free and confidential emotional support to people in suicidal crisis or emotional distress 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Call: 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
Or text CONNECT to 741-741.You are not alone.
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