Marcia Michael was born in London, England to Jamaican immigrant parents in 1973. Drawing attention to personal stories often absent from British history and archives, her interdisciplinary work is largely autobiographical, stemming from her intimate exploration of her Jamaican roots through her mother, who arrived in Britain in 1960 and whom she sees as a muse and 'collaborator'. Michael has been a recipient of several awards and nominations, including the 2010 IPA ‘Family’ awards and a Rhubarb-Rhubarb Bursary (2010), while her work has twice been selected for the prestigious Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London (2010 and 2015).
Artist Marcia Michael was born in 1973 in London, England to Jamaican immigrant parents. She received a BA in Photography, University of Derby (1996), an MA in Photography, London College of Communication (2009) and has recently studied for a practice-based PhD in photography, University of the Arts London (UAL). Having initially photographed landscapes, influenced by historical figures such as Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston, and Group f/64, while ‘taught to look for the beauty in the form that is already present’, since 2009 Michael has observed and documented her family. Her interdisciplinary work is largely autobiographical. In the series The Study of Kin (2009), Michael references the absence of black photographers and black families in British archives, by constructing historical portraits of her family. She has continued to document those close to her – in particular her mother – in order to authenticate and replicate the presence of the black body within the cultural framework of identity theory. Michael views her mother, Myrtle McKnight, who immigrated to Britain in 1960, as a muse and 'collaborator'. She reflects, ‘My mother and I have always been very close, the works are just an extension of our relationship. My father did not like being photographed. It was my mother's influence that allowed me to photograph him on the odd occasion’ (Marcia Michael in 'Embrace The Spirit Of Black Bodies Through Marcia Michael’s Lens', Reform the Funk, 14 January 2021). In 2017, shortly before her mother's death, they visited what remained of the small, now overgrown, Jamaican village where Myrtle grew up, locating it from just a few burial markers and trees. In addition to portraits of McKnight, photographs of the area form part of the installation The Object of My Gaze (2015-2021) displayed at Tate Britain in Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now (2021-2022).
Elaborating on her practice, Michael reflects that: ‘I capture. I see what is and collect it [...] I just opened my eyes and focused on my family [...] Perhaps the primary technique utilised was love, self-love and reality. There was never a shame in my parents’ household with the display of bodies, I got to see a lot of my mother's flesh […] however, the father of my children began to use words against mine and the children's bodies to mark his as superior […] this made me want to see and show Black bodies and document our family's 'flesh'. This is when I bought my own camera and began The Study of Kin which includes The Family Album, so that my children who are of mixed heritage, would see and know the normality and beauty in Black bodies’ (Marcia Michael, Reform the Funk, 14 January 2021). Michael dedicates her artistic practice to the wide and ever-changing parameters of the black family album. She recalls that, ‘My family, at that time, were the link(s) to the past. They were the closest connection available from which to retell a visual story’, before continuing: ‘My visits to Jamaica as a child introduced me to a version of black history that I most certainly was not given in the UK [...] I needed to know what happened in Jamaica with my family [...] The colonial rule of Jamaica by the British, through a personal narrative, needs to be told many times over. This is due to the UK amnesia of the past [...]’ She concludes that, ‘I am not finished with Jamaica; it knows very well that ‘mi soon come’ (Marcia Michael, Reform the Funk, 14 January 2021).
I Am Now You – Mother (2017) continues Michael’s exploration of matrilineage. Concerned with ancestral history and re-remembering, many of the photographs’ titles include the Latin phrase Partus sequitur ventrem [that which is brought forth follows the womb] (Autograph ABP website). This refers to a law passed in the American colonies in 1662 which defined the legal status of children born there; the notion that the social status of the mother is inherited by the child shapes the mother for Michael as both maker and marker of history. In the video Remembering You Remember Me, McKnight is presented in five simultaneous frames, each retelling the birth of her child. The layered, poly-vocal narrative of her uncensored maternal voice creates a powerful and disorientating effect, recovering the history of a matrilineal memory (Autograph ABP website).
Michael has participated in solo exhibitions including Marcia Michael: I Am Now You – Mother, Autograph ABP (2018), and in group shows such as Relating Narratives – The World in London – Olympic Games, held at The Photographers' Gallery during the 2012 London Olympic Games; Womxn of Colour Art Award Exhibition, 198 Arts & Learning (2021); HATCHED21: Oxford International Women Festival, Photo Oxford (2021). Michael has received several awards and nominations in the UK, including the 2010 IPA ‘Family’ awards and a Rhubarb-Rhubarb Bursary (2010), while her work has twice been selected for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London (2010 and 2015). Internationally, she was the 2015 Artist in Residence at the Autograph ABP / Light Work residency in Syracuse, New York, USA. Marcia Michael lives and works in London, England. Her work is held in the Autograph ABP collection.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Marcia Michael]
Publications related to [Marcia Michael] in the Ben Uri Library