Who Is Michael Jang?

Michael Jang spent nearly four decades working as a successful commercial portrait photographer. Unbeknown to the world, however, he was assembling a vast archive of thousands of remarkable images, authoring several now-iconic series: The Jangs (1973), Beverly Hilton (1973), San Francisco (1973–1987), Summer Weather (1983), College (1972–1973), Punks & Poets (1978–1980), and Garage Band (2001). Jang revealed nothing of that vast archive for almost 40 years until 2001, when he submitted a number of images for consideration to San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art. His work attracted immediate acclaim, and for the past fifteen years he has revealed those images in a series of national and international exhibitions and books. The artist’s first major monograph, Who Is Michael Jang?, introduced by long-time collaborator and SFMoMA curator emerita of photography, Sandra S. Phillips, offers readers an eagerly anticipated examination of Jang’s truly idiosyncratic oeuvre. The monograph launches in tandem with Jang’s first major retrospective exhibition, Michael Jang’s California, curated by Sandra S. Phillips. On view September 27th, 2019 to January 18th, 2020 at McEvoy Foundation for the Arts (San Francisco, CA). PHOTOGRAPHS by Michael Jang INTRODUCTION by Sandra S. Phillips FOREWORD by Erik Kessels TEXTS by Kingston Trinder EDITED by Pascale Georgiev DESIGNED by Capucine Labarthe