I love irony… not exclusively, but I have a special appreciation for it. And it underlies a lot of my work. I must have been especially influenced by my mother who would laugh at news stories like, “Santa looses fingers while stepping off helicopter to wave at kids”. During the 50’s my older brother told me all the science fiction and horror movies we were seeing were documentaries. And my dad, being a doctor, surgeon, and coroner, would bring humor to the dinner table on things like bowel obstructions and suicides. My whole family was great at extracting humor out of tragedy and that has given me a way of seeing life. For me creating images is all about my daily life, those meaningful pictures I’m able to extract from it, and the personal photographic vision I bring to those visual narratives.
Michael Northrup was born in 1948, grew up in Marietta Ohio, and graduated high school in 1966. Finding his course in life was a difficult path transferring 4 times before settling at Ohio University to finish his BFA in photography 1970. He spent the next 4 years traveling and building a portfolio that would get him into Grad School. In 1978 he entered the Graduate Photo Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received his MFA 1980. He married 1977, had a child 1981, and taught off and on over the next 10 years. He then moved to Baltimore to enter the commercial photo field 1990 and has been there ever since. He has 6 photo books out and continues to create photographs.
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