Michele Thompson is a poet and photographer working in abstract and street photography. An avid photographer ever since she picked up a Kodak Instamatic at the age of seven, she is a Bay Area native and studied at the San Francisco Art Institute as a photography/printmaking/sculpture major before finishing her degrees in Photography and Linguistics at the University of Oregon. With over 30 years experience as a working artist, she has been featured in both solo and group shows throughout the Pacific Northwest and has published two books of her work. She serves as a Lead Volunteer at Franklin Foto Community Darkroom, moderates their critique group, and helped to found the Femme Fotogs, one of only two photo groups for women photographers in Portland. She also works with Blue Sky Gallery’s Exhibition Committee, the Portland Grid Project, and other groups in the Portland, Oregon photographic community.
We are taught as young children, “don’t look”, “don’t stare”, and “don’t make eye contact” as a way to navigate through society. The camera gives me, gives all of us, the ability to give in to the luxury of looking. One should look, see, stare and not forget the images of what is around them.
I am drawn to the universal threads that tie us together, the spiritual, our food, families, our monuments and their disintegration, our reverence for and neglect of our environment, the way in which we costume ourselves, our public displays, and our private faces. I have been, I am privy to an amazing, and amazingly small, world and am driven to show that to the world. I seek the “o wow” moment, that point when time and place fall away and we are left with the pure pleasure of the voyeuristic instant.
Michele Thompson Photography 