Michael Lewis has spent the last several years working mainly in the world of editorial portraiture. He began taking pictures while going to Temple (and then Tyler School of Art) in Philadelphia and later received a MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Lewis then moved to Los Angeles, where he began to establish himself as an environmental portrait photographer. Along with commissioned photography, he has been working on a body of self-portraits taken during the years he lived in Los Angeles through the present. Of this work he writes, ‘Self-portraiture allows me to experience empathy for the people I photograph. I feel an obligation to my subjects to remain in touch with how it feels to be in front of the camera. My personal work has always informed my commercial endeavors. The lines between commercial and art have always been blurred to me. Each feeds off the other’.
