Michael Somoroff

Last updated

Michael Somoroff is a communication strategist, multimedia artist, director, photographer, and teacher [1] who has worked on projects for corporations, advertising agencies, media companies, and cultural institutions worldwide since 1980. [2] He has collaborated at educational and cultural institutions and is currently an artist in residence at the Wyss Translational Center in association with the University of Zurich and ETH, Zurich. He is also a teacher and cultural commentator who has collaborated with State University of NY, Stony Brook, the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, the Rothko Chapel, Houston, Texas the International Center of Photography, NYC, and the School of Visual Arts, NYC.

Contents

Somoroff's work can be found in museums, art fairs, and exhibitions both nationally and internationally, and he is also the author of five books. [3] Elisabeth Bard has referred in The New York Times to his approach as "Madison Avenue meets the Italian Renaissance." In the advertising industry, he is recognized as one of the top commercial directors, regularly contributing to award-winning films and photography for companies seeking to enhance their brand identity. [4]

Early life and career

Early life

Michael Somoroff was born in New York City during a time of growth in editorial design and analog photography. [5] His father, Ben Somoroff, was a well-known still life and product photographer. He was raised in an environment influenced by the work of Alexey Brodovitch, a legendary art director and teacher who encouraged his students to push boundaries and create innovative images. [6]

Michael Somoroff spent a significant part of his childhood in his father's studio located at 421 East 54th street in New York City, which was a hub for notable art directors, writers, artists, and designers of the time. Somoroff had the opportunity to be mentored by several individuals in his parents' circle, including his mother Alice Bruno who was a well-known fashion model, and his godfather, Henry Wolf. He was also given his first magazine assignment by renowned graphic designer Milton Glaser. Somoroff had developed proficiency in photography by his late teens. [7] In 1979, Richard Avedon facilitated his first show at the International Center of Photography after reviewing Somoroff's portfolio. [8] The review at ICP was conducted personally by Cornell Capa. [9]

Michael Somoroff is known for his association with the Brodovitch alumni. His father was famous for his associations with artists such as Salvador Dali, Truman Capote, and Marian Anderson. [10] After completing his education, he was required to contribute to his family's business and eventually became his father's studio manager and darkroom technician. [11] He gained a reputation as a skilled assistant and freelance photographer, working with many of his father's colleagues including Ben Rose, Sol Mednick, Louis Faurer, and Melvin Sokolsky. His work was documented in the book "A Moment. Master Photographers: Portraits by Michael Somoroff" published by Damiani in 2012. [12] He also attended the New School for Social Research in affiliation with the Parsons School of Design.

Professional career

Michael Somoroff gained recognition as a photographer in the late seventies after his first major exhibition at the International Center for Photography in New York. He then established his own studio [13] and contributed to American and European publications such as Stern, French Elle, and German Vogue. Later, he relocated to Europe where he became known for his photography in magazines such as Life, Harper's Bazaar, Der Spiegel, and Time, as well as for international advertising agencies. His portraiture, nudes, and still life photography have garnered a worldwide audience and received critical acclaim. [14]

Michael Somoroff followed in the footsteps of his father, who was a pioneer in motion picture and product filmmaking, commonly referred to as "Table Top". [15] In the early 1980s, he became a director after winning several awards at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. [16] Somoroff began directing films soon after returning to the U.S. in 1988, at the invitation of Columbia Pictures executive George Cooney. He then went into partnership with D&H Macguffin Films LTD, which was later reorganized as Macguffin Films LTD, where he remained a senior partner until 2015. He was sought after for his unique style, lighting technique and made a significant impact on the commercial production industry. [17]

Michael Somoroff is a renowned tabletop director and photographer. He is credited for his role in establishing the aesthetics of food and drink imagery in advertising, both in motion picture and still photography. [18] He has worked with major brands across the world, including Asahi, Unilever, Pepsi, Burger King, and Proctor and Gamble. He is known for creating effective visual concepts and for his ability to analyze and find obstacles to people's connection to a message or product, offering effective solutions. [19]

In addition to his photography and directing career, Somoroff is also known in the art world. He is recognized for his unique approach to creating content and his use of philosophical "signifiers" to form new philosophical structures in his art. He is successful in both fine art and commercial art and is known for blurring the distinction between the two. His art is focused on spiritual and philosophical inquiry and creating robust social structures. [20]

Somoroff has also studied religion and philosophy in Jerusalem, Israel for over two decades and is a published collaborator on the subject. He is known for his ability to bridge the corporate marketing world and the art world and for his lectures on sustainable wealth.

Selected Art Projects

Michael Somoroff's first major exhibition was held at the International Center for Photography in New York City in 1979. [21] The exhibition was titled "The Vegetable Series" and was organized under the direction of Cornell Cape and William A. Ewing. The exhibition was brought to the attention of the museum by Richard Avedon and Yasuhiro Wakabayashi (HIRO), who served as mentors to the young photographer. The exhibition received positive attention and was profiled in the New York Times by Suzanne Slesin. Following the success of the exhibition, Somoroff received numerous editorial and advertising assignments from international magazines. His first assignment was given to him by Milton Glaser and Walter Bernard at New York Magazine.

Michael Somoroff is known for his work bridging analog and digital art. In 2004, he created a digital version of Duchamp's "Nude Descending Staircase" from 1912 and Gerhard Richter's painting "Ema" from 1992, which he called "Query." [22] [23] This work was seen as a commentary on the history of modern art and the transition from analog to digital. The renowned art critic Donald Kuspit described "Query" as a "consummate example of esthetic-conceptual interdependence" that epitomizes the transition from analogue to digital art and the ironic simultaneity between the two. Kuspit notes that the representation of the nude in the staircase changes from an analogue representation at the top to a digital representation at the bottom.

In 2006, Michael Somoroff was invited to create the first large-scale outdoor installation since Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk, called "Illumination I" for the Rothko Chapel in Houston. "Illumination I" was accompanied by an album of music composed by ambient musician Robert Rich called "Illumination (2007)". When the installation was moved to the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, the audio track and videos were presented as a multimedia installation by BravinLee Programs, Chelsea, NYC, in 2007. [24] The sculpture was last exhibited at Art OMI in 2008 and remained installed there for several years. It is presently in retirement.

In 2008, Somoroff created a site-specific installation of the parting of the Red Sea using four thousand pieces of wood and video projections at St. Peter's Art Station in Cologne, Germany. [25]

Absence of Subject, Somoroff's "unconventional homage" to photographer August Sander, [26] was first presented during the 2011 Venice Biennale on Piazza San Marco. [27] [28]

Somoroff's work is held in art collections of Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; [29] Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; and Museo Correr; it has been exhibited at the International Center of Photography, NYC. [30] Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois.

In 2011, Somoroff produced a series of short videos of poet Giannina Braschi reading from United States of Banana, a work of Postcolonial literature;. [31] [32]

Somoroff is an official "artist in residence" at the Wyss Translational Center Zurich. [33]

Selected Publications

Selected Exhibitions

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2008

2007

2006

1985

1978

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2015

2014

2013

2012

2007

2005

2003

1996

1994

1986

1985

1984

1980

1978

AWARDS

GRANTS

HONORS

BOOKS

BOOKS COLLABORATIONS

Related Research Articles

Robert Frank was a Swiss photographer and documentary filmmaker, who became an American binational. His most notable work, the 1958 book titled The Americans, earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and nuanced outsider's view of American society. Critic Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian in 2014, said The Americans "changed the nature of photography, what it could say and how it could say it. [ ... ] it remains perhaps the most influential photography book of the 20th century." Frank later expanded into film and video and experimented with manipulating photographs and photomontage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henri Cartier-Bresson</span> French photographer (1908–2004)

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment.

Edward Quinn (1920–1997) was born in Ireland. He lived and worked as a photographer from the 1950s, on the Côte d'Azur, during the "golden fifties" the playground of the celebrities from the world of show biz, art and business.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andreas Gursky</span> German artist and photographer

Andreas Gursky is a German photographer and professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany.

Michael Ruetz works as artist and author. He is a German photographer.

Seydou Keïta was a Malian photographer known for his portraits of people and families he took at his portrait photography studio in Mali's capital, Bamako, in the 1950s. His photographs are widely acknowledged not only as a record of Malian society but also as pieces of art.

Guy Bourdin, was a French artist and fashion photographer known for his provocative images. From 1955, Bourdin worked mostly with Vogue as well as other publications including Harper's Bazaar. He shot ad campaigns for Chanel, Charles Jourdan, Pentax and Bloomingdale's.

Malick Sidibé was a Malian photographer noted for his black-and-white studies of popular culture in the 1960s in Bamako. Sidibé had a long and fruitful career as a photographer in Bamako, Mali, and was a well-known figure in his community. In 1994 he had his first exhibition outside of Mali and received much critical praise for his carefully composed portraits. Sidibé's work has since become well known and renowned on a global scale. His work was the subject of a number of publications and exhibited throughout Europe and the United States. In 2007, he received a Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale, becoming both the first photographer and the first African so recognized. Other awards he has received include a Hasselblad Award for photography, an International Center of Photography Infinity Award for Lifetime Achievement, and a World Press Photo award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Wessel Jr.</span> American photographer and educator (1942–2018)

Henry Wessel was an American photographer and educator. He made "obdurately spare and often wry black-and-white pictures of vernacular scenes in the American West".

Lynn Davis is an American photographer known for her large-scale black-and-white photographs which are widely collected publicly and privately and are internationally exhibited.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert Watson (photographer)</span> Scottish photographer

Albert Watson OBE is a Scottish fashion, celebrity and art photographer. He has shot over 100 covers of Vogue and 40 covers of Rolling Stone magazine since the mid-1970s, and has created major advertising campaigns for clients such as Prada, Chanel and Levis. Watson has also taken some well-known photographs, from the portrait of Steve Jobs that appeared on the cover of his biography, a photo of Alfred Hitchcock holding a plucked goose, and a portrait of a nude Kate Moss taken on her 19th birthday.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Demand</span> German sculptor and photographer

Thomas Cyrill Demand is a German sculptor and photographer. He currently lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles, and teaches at the University of Fine Arts, Hamburg.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beat Streuli</span> Swiss visual artist (born 1957)

Beat Streuli is a Swiss visual artist who works with photo and video based media.

Ori Gersht is an Israeli fine art photographer. He is a professor of photography at the University for the Creative Arts in Rochester, Kent, England.

Ricardo Gómez Pérez is a Venezuelan photographer. His work has been presented in galleries throughout the world, including exhibitions in France, Sweden, Japan, Netherlands, Belgium, and the United States. One of his most notable artistic works is "Primeros Pasos", which is a series of black and white photographs of his children with slightly out of focus backgrounds. He worked in Europe starting in the early 1970s until he returned to Venezuela in 1987. He currently works with his partner Ricardo Jiménez under the name of RICAR-2. The duo specializes in corporate portraits and photographs for magazines such as Global Finance, BusinessWeek, Voyageur Magazine, Gatopardo, Gerente, Complot Magazine, and Ocean Drive.

Miles Aldridge is a British fashion photographer and artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catherine Gfeller</span> Swiss artist

Catherine Gfeller is a Swiss artist. She currently lives and works in Paris and Southern France after having lived in New York from 1995 to 1999.

Johnson Donatus Aihumekeokhai Ojeikere, known as J.D. 'Okhai Ojeikere, was a Nigerian photographer known for his work with unique hairstyles found in Nigeria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jungjin Lee</span> Korean photographer and artist (born 1961)

Jungjin Lee is a Korean photographer and artist who currently lives and works in New York City.

Floris Michael Neusüss was a German photographer.

References

  1. ↑ Terranova, Amber (April 2014). "The Subject of No Subject". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  2. ↑ Segal, David (2011-10-08). "Grilled Chicken, That Temperamental Star". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  3. ↑ "Ben-somoroff". 8 February 2017.
  4. ↑ "Ben Somoroff". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  5. ↑ Selsin, Suzanne (10 October 1979). "One Man's View Of Cut‐Up Vegetables". The New York Times.
  6. ↑ "Somoroff, the vegetable series". International Center of Photography. 2016-05-17. Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  7. ↑ ""A Moment" with Michael Somoroff". LOENKE magazine. 2016-06-05. Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  8. ↑ Segal, David (8 October 2011). "In Food Commercials, Flying Doughnuts and Big Budgets". The New York Times.
  9. ↑ "AI-AP | DART » Master Photographers by Michael Somoroff". www.ai-ap.com. Retrieved 2023-02-15.
  10. ↑ Bard, Elizabeth (June 17, 2007). "ART; A 50-Year-Old Upstart Redefines 'Emerging'". The New York Times. Retrieved May 31, 2016.
  11. ↑ "License a song from the album "Illumination" by Robert Rich". ilicensemusic.com. Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  12. ↑ "Somoroff, Michael - Artist, USA - in front of his wooden sculpture..." Getty Images. Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  13. ↑ Terranova, Amber (March 1, 2014). "The Subject of No Subject". The New Yorker. Retrieved May 31, 2016.
  14. ↑ Dyer, Geoff (2017-10-11). "The Photographer Who Saw America's Monuments Hiding in Plain Sight". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  15. ↑ "Sander and Somoroff. Absence of Subject". Wall Street International. 2013-03-01. Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  16. ↑ Arts, The Museum of Fine. "The Museum of Fine Arts". MFAH. Archived from the original on July 1, 2016. Retrieved May 31, 2016.
  17. ↑ Evergreen Review video "Evergreen Review". Archived from the original on 2015-04-02. Retrieved 2015-03-27., New York, 2011
  18. ↑ "Poets, Philosophers, Lovers: On the Writings of Giannina Braschi". upittpress.org. Retrieved 2020-04-29.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  19. ↑ "Faculty".
  20. ↑ Feran, Tim (February 9, 2015). "Longaberger president exits after 6 months". Columbus Dispatch. Retrieved May 9, 2017.
  21. ↑ "August Sander e Michael Somoroff. Absence of Subject". Stelline (in Italian). January 1, 2013. Retrieved May 31, 2016.
  22. ↑ "Benaki Museum : VISIT / EXHIBITIONS". Archived from the original on 2015-08-12. Retrieved 2016-05-31.
  23. ↑ Somoroff, Michael (September 13, 2015). "Absence of Subject". Villa Vauban. Retrieved May 31, 2016.
  24. ↑ "License a song from the album "Illumination" by Robert Rich". ilicensemusic.com. Retrieved 2023-02-15.
  25. ↑ "Somoroff, Michael - Artist, USA - in front of his wooden sculpture..." Getty Images. Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  26. ↑ Terranova, Amber (March 1, 2014). "The Subject of No Subject". The New Yorker. Retrieved May 31, 2016.
  27. ↑ Dyer, Geoff (2017-10-11). "The Photographer Who Saw America's Monuments Hiding in Plain Sight". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  28. ↑ "Sander and Somoroff. Absence of Subject". Wall Street International. 2013-03-01. Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  29. ↑ Arts, The Museum of Fine. "The Museum of Fine Arts". MFAH. Archived from the original on July 1, 2016. Retrieved May 31, 2016.
  30. ↑ "Somoroff, the vegetable series". International Center of Photography. 2016-05-17. Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  31. ↑ Evergreen Review video "Evergreen Review". Archived from the original on 2015-04-02. Retrieved 2015-03-27., New York, 2011
  32. ↑ "Poets, Philosophers, Lovers: On the Writings of Giannina Braschi". upittpress.org. Retrieved 2020-04-29.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  33. ↑ "Faculty".
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.