People nominee

Inspired by the mentality, “survival of the fittest,” this work portrays the darkness of the business world, the routine with stress, competition, even cruelty and the desire of escape from the “circus.”

Michael Shi, a young Chinese photographer in New York, has an uncommon art journey. He started photography at an early age and was fortunate enough to make it professional during his university life. In 2009, he started his own studio in Shanghai and later worked as the Art Director for an Alibaba-invested E-commerce company. Some of his clients included Nike, Nine West, and Levis.

His academic background in statistics and business greatly added to his expertise in lighting techniques and cultivated his visionary endeavors in managing an art project. These diverse experiences, along with twenty years of working on every aspect of photography (portrait, landscape, fashion, commercial, product, dance, street), helped to shape his visual style. Incorporating pieces of learning from all of his different involvements, Michael’s work demonstrates a clean, colorful, character-driven narrative. His new project, Colors of Dance, has received critical acclaim from within both the dance and photography world. He was invited to exhibit his work in the 1st Philadelphia Dance Photo Expo in 2014. His first solo exhibition will be in the Chain Theatre of New York in February 2015.