Michael has been involved in photography in one form or another for over 40 years. Having attained a 1st class BA honors in photography film and television in 1980 at the LCC, and then a year at the Royal College of Art in London. Michael then ran his own studio as a commercial and art photographer, which he closed in 1991. The Michael Hoppen Gallery opened in 1992 and then Shine Gallery opened in 2000. Both galleries are committed to photography in all its forms and the gallery holds regular exhibitions in 19th, 20th and 21st C photography. A third space was added in 2004 on the ground floor enabling a much wider choice of photography to be exhibited. The Michael Hoppen Gallery has also exhibited at art fairs in New York, Mexico, Hong Kong, Basel, Amsterdam, Tokyo and Paris.
The gallery has worked with many of the great names and estates in photography such Jacques Henri Lartigue, Tim Walker, Man Ray, Sarah Moon, Masahisa Fukase, Bradford Washburn, Daido Moriyama, Lucien Hervé, Shomei Tomatsu, Yoshihiko Ueda, Brassai, Erwin Blumenfeldt, Peter Beard, Araki, Guy Bourdin, Richard Avedon, Richard Learoyd, Eamonn Doyle, to name a few, as well as many leading galleries and institutions around the world. The gallery specializes in 20th C Japanese photography since 2006 and continues to find new and fascinating artists such as Sohei Nishino to the attention of collectors around the world.
The gallery deals on a regular basis with museums such as the Victoria and Albert Museum and
Tate Modern in London, SFMoMA, The Pompidou Centre in Paris, The Albertina in Vienna, The National Gallery of Washington, The Rijks Museum, The Getty in LA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, finding museum quality and rare photographic material for acquisition.
The gallery advises many large and smaller companies on their collections and visual merchandising strategies such as N.A Rothschild, British Airways, GAP, Polo Ralph Lauren, Pfizer,
Sainsbury Centre, Norwich and Deutsche Bank, to name a few.
The Michael Hoppen Gallery and Michael Hoppen Contemporary are totally dedicated to the exhibition and publishing of photography and the gallery is dedicated to a high degree of excellence to promote the gallery’s core values and shows in the appreciation of all photographic disciplines.