Gary Michaels

Print Maker

I began taking pictures, with a Brownie camera, as a teenager in The Bronx in 1963 and have been shooting ever since. I would leave my basement apartment, camera in hand , and head out on the downtown Lexington Avenue train to different neighborhoods in The City. I took pictures in train stations, parks and streets from Chinatown to Harlem and everywhere in between including Greenwich Village, Central Park, Soho, Chelsea, 125 St., Fifth Avenue, Midtown Manhattan, the Upper West Side and wherever I found myself. I never set out to take a particular picture. Every shot that I have ever taken has been a “moment” that called out to me and told a story with a single image. Nothing more and nothing less. A fleeting image captured forever with a click of my shutter. One second earlier or one second later and the picture doesn’t exist My photographs can be seen, on the “Moments” page of my website, garymichaelsimages.com. My oldest images are “Ladies Who Lunch” taken at Fifth Avenue and 64 Street, “Peace Man” and “Two Old Friends” taken outside The Children’s Zoo in Central Park. They remain amongst my favorites.
By 1968 I had developed an interest in print making and along with a partner, founded Gemini Enterprises, a psychedelic poster company, on Spring Street, in what would later become Soho.
A few years later we changed our company name to Gemini Rising. At Gemini I was the inside man, a hands on silk screener and one of our poster designers. We specialized in iconic black light silk screened posters of popular Rock & Roll artists as well as social and political figures and issues. We fought a few battles winning some and losing others. Our more controversial work drew the attention of Coca Cola, the press and fans worldwide. With it all we were successful enough to sell over 4,000,000 posters worldwide. During the Gemini years I had the good fortune to visit and collaborate with some of New York’s finest print makers. Fortuitously, one afternoon, I was visiting master printer Alexander Heinrici’s Studio when he was pulling artists proofs of Andy Warhol’s Mao print. Alexander and an assistant were screening the piece on the floor of his studio. To this day I have not lost my enthusiasm, love and practice of this process. In 1972 I sold Gemini and immediately began publishing books. The most successful were the iconic and irreverent “The Gourmet Coke Book” and “Courtside: The Fans Guide to Pro Basketball” Both books were well received and can occasionally be found on Amazon or E-Bay
although they now sell for 7-30 times the original published price. In 1993 I began a collaboration with gallerist Fredric Snitzer, and in 1994 we published “The Portfolio Five” a limited edition set of 5 silk screened prints, 1 each by Cuban artists: Luis Cruz Acaceta, Tomas Esson, Carlos Cardenas, Juan Abreu and Julio Antonio. The portfolio has been called “historic, breathtaking and master prints by The Whitney Museum of American Art and has been curated into 9 museums around the world including The Whitney Museum, The Bibliotheque Nationle De France, The Hirschorn and The Museum of Fine Arts of Boston. Throughout my life I have been involved in one way or another in the world of professional boxing and in 2013 I began working on my series “ Storied Lives : Boxers and Fighters”, my series of limited edition prints where I salute five of the greatest world champion boxers and most interesting men of theirs or any era. The five are: Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson, Max Baer, Jack Johnson and Stanley Ketchel. My prints are accompanied by short stories that I have written and narrated on these unique and exceptional men. Today I find myself focused on printing and showing my 60 years of street photography. Most recently my “Ladies Who Lunch” photograph was juried into The Vero Beach Museum of Art”

A Great Honor

2016

I am happy to announce that I had been curated into and asked to give an artist’s talk at:
The International Print Center of New York
New Prints 2016 / Winter Show
January 28 – March 26, 2016
508 West 26 Street, Room 5A
New York, New York 10001

After Gemini I went on to publish:
3 books:
“Courtside: The Fans Guide to Pro Basketball”
“The Art of the Mercedes Benz Racing Car”
“The Gourmet Cokebook”
and
“The Portfolio Five” . 5 silk screen prints. 1 each by 5 dissident Cuban artists.