About
Michael Becker is a Los Angeles based photographer artist that studies the complexities of human form.
By playing with movement, Becker plays with the compositional idea of shape, color, and space.
Strictly using only his eye to capture the nuance of the subject matter, he does very little with photoshop and relies only on cropping with some saturation of color.
About
HE WAS BORN
Not in a trunk, not in the Princess Theater, not in Pocatello, Idaho and his name is not Judy Garland. He was born in a hospital bed at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia on January 8, 1938, and his name is Michael Becker.
HE GREW UP
Not on the Main Line, did not go to prep school, did not ride to the hunt and is not a Philadelphia WASP. He is from an upper middle class Jewish family, his grandfather was a rabbi and from the time he was three years old all he wanted to do, and did do was draw, paint, design clothes, design rooms and design just about anything.
HE WAS EDUCATED
At Central High School in Philadelphia, the only high school in the United States that bestows a degree to select students, where he majored in art and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in art, but his name is not Thomas Eakins. He attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Art every Saturday from 1947 to 1955. Most people in Philadelphia assumed he would become an artist except one: his father. His father had decided that his son would become an attorney because artists are usually gay and also starve to death, so he was sent to the University of Pennsylvania but did not receive a Fine Arts degree. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology. He received a Doctorate of Jurisprudence from the University of Pennsylvania Law School where he studied as little law as possible but excelled in designing the yearbooks and all posters for all the events of the law school. In 1963 he was elected Outstanding Senior of the Year for his efforts as a leader, but he finished in the bottom third of the senior law school class.
HE WORKED
Not as lawyer but as a trust administrator and became the Senior Vice President of a bank because he enjoyed working with the great art of the clients. In 1995 he became the president of the Los Angeles Trust Officers Association. For fun he travelled the world taking endless photos and became well known as a photographer, but of travel photos. He also went to UCLA extension and studied art, but at night.
HE RETIRED
In 1998 with back injuries resulting in surgeries, pain and ultimately insomnia. He began spending sleepless nights working with the travel photos he had taken, but not in Seattle. His only education in photography is a few hours with some retired people teaching Photoshop on the cruise ships he was on. He does very little with Photoshop and relies only on cropping, some saturation of color and yes, his eye. He is self-taught and has no resume of any shows in any London gallery or museums. He is Michael Becker.
