MICHAEL LANG
About the Artist
Michael Lang, a Touchstone member-artist since 1999, is an accomplished social documentary photographer living in the Washington area. His 1957 photo-essay, A Nice Clean Room, focused on a Baltimore poolroom known as Benny’s. He approached the subject as an outside observer, presenting atmospheric images of the poolroom and the people who hung out there using a hand held camera, available light, and black and white film.
Lang has returned to the genre 50 years later with an essay, Be: There, about the Be Bar, a lounge in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington, now undergoing a rebirth after the riots of the 1960s. Again Lang uses available light and a hand held camera; but now he employs digital techniques to capture the stark raw, color of the place and the people. He’s always there and not there at the same time, observing the community - the bar tenders, the drag queens, the go-go boys, and the people who gravitate to the atmosphere of the place.
For additional information visit www.mikelangphoto.com or contact mike@mikelangphoto.com. Recent solo exhibitions at Touchstone include:
Slow Walking in NY, May 2015
THE DRAG ILLUSION, November 2012