Michael Garlington

Mike Garlington was born in Redding, California and moved to Petaluma at a young age. It was in this environment of hippies, poultry farmers, foundries, metal fabricators, bleeding hearts, wanna' be artists, transients and a David Lynch meets Leave it to Beaver backdrop that served as an early inspiration. He has grown up in the world of photography his whole life and grew up working in a black and white photo lab in San Francisco at Spindler Photographic Services a photo lab that he currently owns. At 17 he began photographing and documenting the world around him in all of its splendor, degeneracy, vice, normality, and banality. In recent years he has toured the country in his "Photo Car," a display and tribute in itself to his work. Literally a Volkswagen with his photographs displayed on it. The tours have produced a body of work that adds a critical but divergent view of the United States in all of its finery, debauchery, and in his own words portraying the "belly of the whale." His work , however, adds a view of ordinary Americans in their day to day lives, whatever lives it is they lead. He has done more than twenty one man shows and his work has been on display at the Barry Singer Gallery in Petaluma, California for three years. The inspiration for his work continues to be a love of humanity with a realization of the limits of what can and can not be shown by photography leaving the viewer to make their own choice and not an in your face opinion expressed by the photographer. His work is as intoxicating as the vineyards and wines they produce and natural beauty of the county he grew up in, as well as acid and harsh as the unforgiving summer California sun, and speaks silently as the crack of a plumber's ass working to clean your pipes. He is currently working on a series of California Mexican working families living in trailers and struggling for a piece of a promised dream.