Biography.
Michael Meyersfeld.

Michael Meyersfeld lives and works in Johannesburg South Africa.

His work is notable for its stark, sometimes sombre, lonely and edgy imagery that has separateness from reality.
His more recent work involves the staging of people in structured scenes portraying mans’ emotional and behavioural patterns.

Fascinated with image making from the age of six, he began taking pictures with a baby brownie camera, and spent every available moment making contact prints under the stairwell of his home.

His schooling was at King Edward VII Preparatory and High Schools, and he then went on to do a degree in commerce at the University of the Witwatersrand, after which he joined the family steel business.

The Camera Club of Johannesburg introduced him to the world of art photography and during those years he won many prizes at the numerous International Photo Salons.

Meyersfeld is not comfortable being drawn into giving explanations. His titles are deliberately obtuse nudging the viewer to uncover what memory or emotion that particular image has stirred in them, moving them to reflect, and respond in their own personal world.

His recently completed exhibition “Life Staged” will preview mid 2012. It encompasses four components dealing respectively with the conditioning of man, the changing role of woman, judgment, and the seduction and pitfalls of urban society.

These are not random photographs. Each image is planned, sculpted, and directed to the point where the desired tension is achieved.

Meyersfeld has had fifteen previous exhibitions and has published two books, the first being the ground breaking gay and lesbian “GAZE”, a political and artistic glimpse of humanity beyond race, class and physical circumstance.

The second book. “Life Staged” is companion to the exhibition of the same title.

His 2011 exhibition “Transience”, a series of wind-blown elements, continued his theme of lonely and isolated images.
Meyersfeld is not by nature a collaborator and has always enjoyed immersing himself in things of his own choosing. His art comes from his complete solitary self. He defines his solitude as an achievement and sees it as the inspiring fullness of his surroundings rather than the absence of other people.

He is currently working on a project entitled “Applause” which deals with the never-ending universal craving for approval.

Meyersfeld has won numerous awards, the most recent being a Gold at the London AOP Awards.

1975; Nedbank Gallery
1977; SA Pentax Gallery
1978: Goodman Gallery
1979: Gallery Querschnitt
1980: Pentax Gallery
1982: Marker Photo Gallery
1986: The Photo Gallery
1995: Everard Read Gallery
2001: Photo ZA Gallery
2001: Paris Photo
2004: Photo ZA Gallery
2007: David Brown Gallery
2010: Life Staged: Obert Contemporary
2011: Trancience: INTOTO Gallery
2012: ABSA Retrospective


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