Having known Michael Somoroff for many years and having had the pleasure of collaborating with him on many projects, it’s my pleasure to share him with you. Michael is a photographer, director, conceptual artist and communication strategist. He has photographed and created critically acclaimed content for major magazines, advertising agencies, as well as a wide breadth of corporations, publications and cultural institutions around the globe. Somoroff has consistently mined the visual arts, and specifically photography’s creative potential, through his skills as a problem solver, with a genuine curiosity and openness towards innovation. He is about humanity and depth. He is gifted with the ability of “intensive seeing”.

The results of his creative endeavors are well represented in museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, ICP; The International Center of Photography, NYC, Hirshhorn Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Museo Correr, Venice, Italy, as well as international advertising and marketing campaigns.
In addition, his work is regularly exhibited at international art fairs, galleries and diverse organizations of all kinds.

Michael grew up in New York City in the midst of many of photography’s specifically and worldwide advertising’s generally, giants. The name “Somoroff” is tightly linked to a certain moment during the “Mad Men” days of advertising, editorial art and television. Ben Somoroff, Michael’s father, together with Irving Penn, is considered by many to be one of the most important American still life/product photographers in the history of photography and the original inventor of “tabletop” motion picture film making.

As a student of the legendary art director, Alexey Brodovitch, Ben Somoroff introduced Michael who grew up in the studio, at an early age to Brodovitch’s revolutionary philosophy, “Astonish Me” which influenced his father’s close colloquies of photographers, artists, and designers, including Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Robert Frank, Arnold Newman, Lillian Bassman, Milton Glaser, Lester Bookbinder, Henry Wolf and Art Kane to name a few, encouraging Michael to make unexpected images and push the boundaries of conventional ways of thinking and seeing. This is the driving force that has been dominant throughout Somoroff’s career and remains so today, making him uniquely connected to the foundations of 20th century cultural production and communication problem solving.

Brodovitch urged his students to “show me something I haven’t seen before.” believing that genuine artistic expression is a form of spiritual self-realization. The demand for originality as a way of cultural progress, so fundamental to our culture’s way of understanding the creative process, is foundational to Somoroff’s process. It also created an exciting period of experimentation and innovation in media of all kinds and remains a dominant influence even today in all areas of media production.

In the late seventies, flushed with assignments after his first major exhibition at New York’s International Center of Photography, Michael Somoroff opened his own studio. Invited by several major, European magazines, he moved to Europe where he became a celebrated photographer in his own right, working in Paris, Milan, London, Hamburg and New York, for publications such as Life, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Stern, Time, Esquire, New York, Zeit and Der Spiegel. His portraiture, nudes and still lives captured a worldwide audience and received much critical acclaim, as did his many books and exhibitions.

His career as a commercial director was launched in London in the eighties at the famous Directors Studio created by Jim Baker, where the foundations of the commercial production industry were promoted by transforming brand name photographers into commercial directors. Along with the introduction to commercial production given to him through his father Ben, Michael Somoroff initially developed his directorial talents under the direction of the crew at Directors Studio. There additionally he was also influenced by his colleagues Lester Bookbinder, and Julian Cottrell. Sought after for his unique lighting and composition skills, Somoroff’s initial directorial efforts were rewarded with several Lions awarded him by the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. He began directing films full time soon after and became one of the most successful commercial, table-top directors in the world.

Parallel to his career as a successful photographer and director, Somoroff also enjoys a substantial reputation in the art world. In an article published in the “Arts and Leisure” section of the Sunday New York Times, the author described Somoroff’s approach to creating content as “Madison Avenue meets the Italian Renaissance: big budgets, large teams, high-tech tools and an artist-manager equally at ease with corporate sponsors and Chelsea gallerists.”

Throughout his career he has pursued his fine art interests with fierce dedication. He is renowned for breaking down the boundary between commercial art and fine art, working with refined, elegant minimalism. Somoroff has developed a manner of approaching specific cultural and social experiences by confronting people’s assumptions and transforming them into unique, communication building blocks, which he then re-assembles into new social structures promoting sustainable commerce.