Born in North Carolina, Michael Childers attended UCLA Film School where he directed student films and began his photography career studying with Robert Heineken and Edmund Teske. Michael created the mixed media work for the record-breaking run of the off-Broadway musical, "Oh! Calcutta!", for Kenneth Tynan, leading to an invitation for photographic work at Sir Laurence Olivier’s National Theater in London. He remains the only American photographer invited to do so. He was a founding photographer for Andy Warhol’s Interview and After Dark magazines; and produced Dance magazine covers featuring the Joffrey Ballet, The Royal Ballet, and Alvin Ailey Dance Company, and co-authored Bejart: The World of Dance.From his LA studios, Michael photographed 200+ magazine covers including GQ, New York, TV Guide, Esquire, Los Angeles, Elle, Paris Match, Life, London Sunday Times Magazine, and English and Italian Vogue. He created 150+ album covers and film posters for major studios and worked as a photographer on many films.In 2003, the Palm Springs Desert Museum presented a forty-year retrospective of Michael’s work, Icons and Legends. In 2006, La Dolce Vita: The Photography of Michael Childers, was exhibited at the Los Angeles Film Festival; the Palm Springs Art Museum presented Celebration of Three Hollywood Photographers: George Hurrell, Sid Avery, In 2007, Rockin’ Hollywood at the Queen Mary Gallery, Long Beach featured portraits of rock-and-roll icons and music legends. Author Author, featuring Childers’ images of celebrated authors, playwrights, poets and screenwriters, was exhibited in a dozen major U.S. libraries, including the Beinecke Library Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University and the Monroe C. Gutman Library at Harvard University in 2019.His photos are in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery; Victoria & Albert Museum; British Film Institute Library in London; Palm Springs Art Museum; the University of Texas at Austin - Harry Ransom Center; UC Riverside Photography Museum, Laguna Art Museum; Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Marion Center for the Photographic Arts, Santa Fe; Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, Beverly Hills; Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts; San Luis Obispo Museum of Art; Seattle Art Museum; Scripps College Museum of Art; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Marquette University Art Gallery, Milwaukee; Santa Monica Museum of Art; Yale University Beinecke Library; Yale Center of British Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Cal State Fullerton Art Gallery.Having a Ball, a large retrospective of Childers’ works, opened at the Palm Springs Art Museum on January 13 th , 2018, and Starstruck, a retrospective of his works on Hollywood films, opened January 31, 2018, at the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills.Michael won a Best Short Documentary Film Award in 2019 from the Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival for the film he produced called I Knew Andy Warhol. Michael can be seen in the forthcoming documentary, Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy on Netflix and plays Oscar Wilde’s photographer in the independent film All About Oscar to be released 2025. His next personal project will be a publication entitled Divine Creatures, a drag ball and white party photographic collection from the 1970’s and 2000’s. On the 17 th of January 2025, Childers will be featured in the series Artists in Conversation with the Yale British Museum of Art, highlighting his work as well as a lifetime of memories with artist and dear friend David Hockney. Michael currently resides in Palm Desert, California.