michael levy - biography

When I was 14 years old I developed my first roll of black & white film while in high school in Belgium and that was enough to get me hooked on the photographic process for life. I continued to study photography on a casual basis throughout my high school years working mostly in B&W on my old Pentax K1000: a fully mechanical camera that was incredibly reliable for many, many years.

I continued to explore the World through the lenses of my various cameras: Nikons, Rolleis and Hasselblads in black & white negatives and colour transparencies (slide films), on paper, on screen, in books, calendars, cards and more. The photographic process changed over the years with more and more automation becoming the norm as people relinquished control of their image making to the processors in their cameras and computers. I was a very late comer to the digital photo realm and use the digital darkroom sparingly: minor adjustments to contrast, colour balance, brightness, etc...as well as image colour control from colour to B&W when an image seems better suited to the monochromatic medium.

I feel very fortunate to have learned the craft while film was still dominant: it required a much different level of commitment and expertise to photograph consistently well when using film versus digital. The digital image is much more forgiving and provides instant feedback whereas with film one needed to wait for processing in a lab before seeing any results which could take a fairly long time: you made sure that you had captured a usable image!

In 2010 I received a kidney transplant from my sister Barbara which has allowed me to begin working on my photography once more after a four year hiatus. Even with a new (to me!), fully functioning kidney I still have many limitations when it comes to time & energy commitments. I have learned to work around the limitations and do whatever I can even if it is only an hour at a time. A somewhat slower process but it still gets me to where I need to be...eventually.

My vision continues to change as I age and mature as an artist: I feel much less constrained in how I pursue my photographic work and am enjoying my new-found freedom. Rather than approach a subject or location with pre-conceived notions or ideas, I keep an open mind to new possibilities that may present themselves at any given time. I still have goals, motifs and aesthetics that I work through but I try not to allow them to limit my vision.

Influences include but are not limited to:

Edward Weston
Alexander Rodchenko
Nick Brandt
Sheila Metzner
Andy Goldsworthy