Plastic Cameras Toying With Creativity

Michelle Bates has been playing with Holgas since 1991. She first discovered them at the Maine Photographic Workshops, where they are used as a teaching tool. Aside from several workshops there, she has continued studying photography with courses at the Photographic Center Northwest and the Coupeville Arts Center. Bates Holga photographs have been exhibited in numerous group exhibitions around the US and internationally, including at the International Center of Photography bookstore, in Italy and Japan. Solo shows of her work have taken place in Seattle and in Israel (see resume). In 1997, Bates researched and helped produce Alternate View, a newsletter about toy cameras for the Maine Photographic Workshops. She was featured in this publication, as well as other print and web sites by Calumet Photographic, Cachet Photographic, EyeCaramba, PhotoCentral, the Toy camera Homepage, SHOTS Magazine and the Jerusalem Post. Bates has received awards from PhotoCentral and several print awards from the Golden Light Awards, as well as being named in their Top 100 Photographers each year she entered. Currently, Michelle Bates is a member of the Advisory Board of Photographic Professionals of Freestyle Photographic Supply, which features board members and their publications extensively in their catalogs and on their web site, as well as arranging exhibitions, lectures and workshops at their Hollywood facility and at trade shows nationwide. Bates teaches toy camera workshops in Seattle and around the Northwest (as a sometimes faculty member of the Photographic Center Northwest, at the Coupeville Arts Center and the Cascades Academy of Photography), and had one scheduled at the Santa Fe Workshops. She guest lectures regularly at the Academy of Art in San Francisco and ICP in New York, has been invited to speak at the Maine Photographic Workshops and is a member of the Society of Photographic Educators. With her long history of creating toy camera imagery and activity in the national and international toy camera community for well over a decade, Michelle Bates is a well-known and respected name in the field.Bates, Michelle is the author of 'Plastic Cameras Toying With Creativity', published 2006 under ISBN 9780240808406 and ISBN 0240808401.