Michael Jang: Who Is Michael Jang?

About this book

Who is Michael Jang? I dont know if hes a hipster or a nerd a conceptual genius or instinctual savant. All I know is that he takes some of the best pictures Ive ever seen. Alec Soth San Franciscobased photographer Michael Jang spent nearly four decades working as a successful commercial portrait photographer. Unbeknownst to the world however he was simultaneously assembling a vast archive of thousands of remarkable images documenting variously: college days Hollywood celebrities would-be weather presenters San Francisco street scenes his family Bay Area punks and adolescent garage bands. Jang revealed nothing of his ever-expanding eclectic archive for almost 40 years until 2001 when he submitted a number of images for consideration to San Franciscos Museum of Modern Art. Jangs work attracted immediate acclaim and for the past decade he has continued to unveil his considerable oeuvre in national and international exhibitions and monographs. The photographers first major monograph Who Is Michael Jang? highlights Jangs most important bodies of work. Introduced by his longtime collaborator and SFMOMA curator emerita of photography Sandra Phillips this volume offers readers a long-overdue introduction to Jangs incredible images. Michael Jang (born 1951) has practiced photography in San Francisco for more than 50 years. After decades of successful commercial portraiture Jang began to revisit the vast archive of unseen spontaneous images he has amassed many of which betray the influence of celebrated street photographers such as Lee Friedlander Garry Winogrand and Lisette Model.