American Plastician photograph.
Lives and works in Paris, France.
Mastered in Fine Arts, (MFA) photography, from the Tyler School of Art, Pennsylvania, USA.
Michael McCarthy lived and worked in several countries other than the United States: Italy, Greece and France.
Those worldwide experiences as a teacher and photograph inspired its very particular and unique work.
Michael McCarthy's General statement:
"My credo in photography has always been that there are no rules except that anything that makes a photograph more powerful justifies its use or inclusion. With this in mind for the last 28 years working in and out of darkrooms, I’ve explored and experimented with different camera types, films, papers, photo processes, darkroom and other techniques in an effort to have at my disposal as many different tools and types of photographic vocabulary as I can to enable me the greatest degree of freedom to explore a diverse range of subject matter and themes.
While I’m fascinated by the power of photography to represent people and places, how it can seem so real, I’m also interested in more than just its power to represent. The notion of photographs as witness and evidence are also crucial to me. A photograph can at once be a transparent representation of the thing and yet it is itself an object. And I’ve come to discover, from years of working with innumerable photo processes and techniques, that the photograph, like a painting or drawing, can function like an artifact that carries its history in the physical traits of the photographic print itself which opens up interesting and subtle questions about narrative."
Web site of Michael McCarthy