Michael Somoroff

Michael Somoroff was born in New York City in 1957. Being influenced by his prominent father, the commercial photographer Ben Somoroff, he studied art and photography at the New School for Social Research in New York. In the late 1970s, Somoroff headed to Europe, where he eventually opened his photography studio in Hamburg, Germany. There he became a celebrated photographer, contributing editorials to influential magazines such as Life, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Stern, Time and Der Spiegel. In his various projects, he seeks the deconstruction of philosophical, religious and psychological theories by reinventing them in different contexts. He explores movement, time and light and employs computer technology to do so. His work is throughout conceptual, with each piece being a construct of different layers of meaning. Among his multimedia projects is Illumination I, a large-scale outdoor installation that was created for the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas in 2006. At the 2011 Venice Biennale, Somoroff’s homage to legendary photographer August Sander, Absence of Subject, was exhibited at the Piazza San Marco. His work is part of major collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; and Museo Correr, Venice. His work has been exhibited at the International Center of Photography, New York; in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Somoroff lives and works in New York City.