229 - Michael Ackerman

A Small Voice: Conversations With Photographers

Michael Ackerman was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1967. When he was seven years old his family emigrated to New York City, where he grew up and began photographing at the age of eighteen. Michael has exhibited internationally and published five books, including End Time City, by Robert Delpire, which won the Prix Nadar in 1999. His other books are Epilogue (Void, 2019) Half Life (Delpire, 2010) Fiction (Delpire, 2001) and Smoke (l'axolotl, 2023). His work is in the permanent collection of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Brooklyn Museum, and The Biliothèque National, France among others, as well as in many private collections.

“In Michael Ackerman’s work, documentary and autobiography conspire with fiction, and all of the above dissolve into hallucination. His photography explores time and timelessness, personal history and the history of places, immediate family and love, with all it’s complexities and contradictions. “ Jem Cohen.

Michael currently lives in Berlin and is represented by Galerie Camera Obscura, Paris, Spot Home Gallery, Naples and MC2 Gallery, Milan.

In episode 229, Michael discusses, among other things:

• A little family history
• Why he put that info on his website
• Collating family photos on becoming a father
• Why he loves New York
• How he started photography there
• Being ‘very, very slow’
• Why he uses cheap plastic cameras
• What he likes about photographing animals
• Mood
• Anders Petersen
• Longing being the human condition
• Photographing ‘life’
• Text and context
• Transcending the facts while keeping a strong hold on a deeper truth
• His life in Berlin with an impossible ‘to do’ list

Referenced:

• Teru Kuwayama
• Sylvia Plachy
• Lorenzo Castore
• Anders Petersen
• Robert Frank
• Masao Yamamoto
• Boris Mikhailov
• Jem Cohen

Website | Instagram

“For me photography is always a negotiation between confrontation and avoidance. And I think my pictures show that. I think my pictures are very intimate and they do get close to something and they are an attempt at getting close, but there’s also a lot of fear in them I see, because I know it in myself, and a lot of solitude.”

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