Michael Childers

Michael Childers has been a renowned and highly respected film, dance, and theater photographer for forty years. Since 1996, he has been working solely with fine art photography and on book projects. Born in North Carolina, Childers graduated from UCLA Film School where he directed student films and began his photography career by studying with Robert Heineken and Edward Teske. Childers created the mixed media work for the record-breaking run of the hit off-Broadway musical "Oh Calcutta" for Kenneth Tynan. It was Tynan who subsequently invited Michael to work for Sir Laurence Olivier's National Theater in London. He remains the only American photographer invited to photograph the National Theater's productions. He went on to become a founding photographer for Andy Warhol's Interview and After Dark magazines. For Dance magazine, he produced many covers including those featuring the Joffrey Ballet, The Royal Ballet, and the Alvin Ailey Dance Company as well as co-authored a book Bejart: The World of Dance. From his Melrose Avenue and Venice Beach studios Childers photographed over 200 magazine covers including GQ, New York, TV Guide, Esquire, Los Angeles, Elle, Paris Match, Life, London Sunday Times Magazine, and both English and Italian Vogue. He created more than 100 film posters for major motion picture studios. In 1988, Michael won the award for "Best Poster of the Year" from the New York Art Director's Circle for the film Siesta. He has also worked as a special photographer on many films including Grease, Marathon Man, The Year of Living Dangerously, Coal Miner's Daughter, Pennies from Heaven, Hammett, and Endless Love. Michael's work in feature films extends beyond photography. Starting as a production assistant on the Academy Award winning Midnight Cowboy, he worked his way up the production ranks on such films as Day of the Locust and Marathon Man before going on to co-produce The Falcon and the Snowman and The Believers. Childers is finishing work on a new project Passionate Moves: Contact Yoga for Couples, a lavishly illustrated photography book of beautifully toned prints featuring nude couples practicing yoga positions. He has been selected as one of the 100 most important photographers of erotic art in the world by Graphis Magazine. His work was featured in Masterpieces of Erotic Photography (1999), Femmes (2001), and Adonis (2001) by Carlton Books London. His work is also featured in Dream Boys I and II, by Studio Books Australia and Male Nudes Now (2002), by Rizzoli publications. Recent exhibitions include The Sensual in Photography (2002) at the BGH Gallery Santa Monica, The Lost Warhols, a collection of previously unpublished portraits of Andy Warhol, which debuted in Los Angeles at the Stephen Cohen Gallery and at the Lew Allen Gallery in Santa Fe. He also exhibited in the group show Dogs and Cats at the Stephen Cohen Gallery Los Angeles. Other exhibitions include the solo shows, Hollywood Voyeur and Famous - 40 Years of Celebrity Photography at the Erickson Gallery in Palm Springs; American Artist in Paris at the Louis Stern Fine Arts in Beverly Hills and the French Consulate in Los Angeles; Distortions in My Mind at the Jerry Miller Gallery in Palm Springs and St. Louis (April 2002) and at Louis Stern Fine Arts in West Hollywood (July - September, 2002); Icons and Idols - Gays and Lesbians in the Arts at the Peter Blake Gallery in Laguna Beach (June 2002). Trinity Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia with Connie Imboden, August 2002. In 2000, Michael published his first collection of photographs in the book, Hollywood Voyeur, with a forward by Gavin Lambert and an introduction by David Hockney. Michael's work was featured at the APEX Gallery Los Angeles group shows entitled Tinsel with Eve Arnold, Sid Avery, Bob Willoughby and Loomis Dean; and Artists as Art with Harry Benson, Horst, Alfred Eisensteadt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Edward Steichen and Phillippe Halsman. Other group shows in 2002 include City of Angels...Gates of Hell at the Advocate Gallery in Los Angeles; I Shot Andy Warhol at the Fahey-Klein Gallery Los Angeles; and Photo LA, a photographic print exhibition at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium (shown through Louis Stern Fine Arts). Solo Show, "Distortions in My Mind" at the Louis Stern Fine Arts Gallery, August, 2002. Michael's work is in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Marion Museum of Photographic Studies in Santa Fe, the University of California Riverside photographic collections, the Palm Springs Desert Museum photographic collection, the Chiat Day Collection in Santa Monica, the Lincoln Center Library of Performing Arts in New York, and the Laguna Art Museum. Upcoming exhibitions are scheduled for the Russian State Museum in St. Petersburg in September 2003 and a retrospective at the Palm Springs Desert Museum in June of 2004.