Biography
Michael Jang spent more than four decades working as a successful commercial portrait photographer but was simultaneously creating an archive of thousands of remarkable images across several now-iconic series: The Jangs (1973), Beverly Hilton (1973), San Francisco (1973–87), Summer Weather (1983), College (1972–73), Punks & Poets (1978–80), and Garage Band (2001). Jang revealed nothing from his archive until 2001, when he submitted a selection of images for consideration to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His work attracted immediate acclaim. His first monograph, Who Is Michael Jang?, was published in 2019, the same year his first major retrospective exhibition was mounted at the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts. The documentary Who is Michael Jang? (dir. Michael Jacobs, 2024) debuted in May 2024 at the San Francisco Documentary Film Festival. Jang’s work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and SFMoMA, among others.
