Brian Michaels' passion for photography began in his early teens as did his passion for music and later the law. Instead of following the artist’s path, Brian chose a profession as an attorney and did not fall into Photography until he was well into his 30s. Michaels spent nearly 8 years working as a Prosecutor before becoming a Private Defense Attorney based in West Los Angeles.
An avid historian, Michaels stumbled into photography as a corollary to his new found love of travel, something that sprang out of a desire to chase history. Since 1998 Michaels now has been to 67 countries, and most of the United States. His first trip to Europe in 1998 was inspired by the film Saving Private Ryan. Both a novice traveller and photographer he managed to find his way to Omaha Beach on that first trip but with only a few hours to see the sites. He has since been back 3 more times including the 60th anniversary of the DDAY Landings in 2004.
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Discovered through social media, Michaels was later tapped by a Los Angeles Arts and Music magazine and asked to contribute photography for his life’s other great love; Rock and Roll. Over the course of several years Michaels has photographed an astounding number of some of the greatest musical acts of our time, including “The Who” “The Beach Boys” “Van Halen” “The Red Hot Chili Peppers” “Patti Smith” “Robert Plant” “Heart” “X”, “Social Distortion” “Eddie Vedder” “Bryan Ferry” and many more. Michaels now contributes images and journalistic pieces to several music and culture magazines in Southern California.
More recently, and with the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic, and resulting worldwide unrest Michaels' has spent days embedded with Police and Protestors alike documenting the historic Black Lives Matter protests and resulting unrest and has contributed a large body of photojournalistic work probably unmatched given the dangerous circumstances in which he had to shoot these images. For several days in Los Angeles his camera was one of only a handful covering the chaos in close quarters with most major media outlets choosing to cover events from the air.
During the Los Angeles protests, Michaels shuttled between multiple neighborhoods in Los Angeles covering both scenes of the pandemic and the resulting riots and protests in a week's time from the perspective of both the Police and the Protestors. Michaels prior career working with law enforcement allowed him to freely move between both camps to capture images from opposing lines. Intent upon creating a lasting documentary series of his City during this tumultuous time he covered protests in Van Nuys, Hollywood, Compton,Westwood, Venice, Downtown and finally Watts.
From there Michaels' followed up with a series of images he shot in Seattle while embedding with protestors in the the Seattle Occupied Zone also known as CHOP in the Capital Hill suburb of Seattle where he captured another series of historic shots from inside the so-called Zone. Again Michaels was one of a few photographers able to find his way into the ranks of the protestors occupying an entire neighborhood of Seattle. He stayed with the protestors until nearly the end of the occupation waiting to be overrun by law enforcement.
Michaels' plans on continuing this recent photojournalistic project and hopes to someday show them when people can actually gather, create a companion book and potentially involve other Photographers in a Photo Documentary Project tentatively titled Project 2020 and is currently seeking a publisher to help to get these images seen. At the time of this writing Michaels is packing to leave Los Angeles to cover unrest in Portland.
For the first time ever he is making his images available for sale which can be done directly through this website. While this website does not operate solely for profit, any purchases surely help to offset the tremendous investment spent documenting the world and its life. A vast collection of already framed pieces will also become available soon.
Thank you for visiting. This is a moving work in progress.