Born in North Carolina

Childers attended the UCLA Film School where he directed student films and began his photography career by studying with Robert Heineken and Edmund Teske. Childers created the mixed media work for the record-breaking run of the hit off-Broadway musical "Oh! Calcutta!" for Kenneth Tynan. It was Tynan who subsequently invited Michael to work for Sir Laurence Olivierís National Theater in London. He remains the only American photographer invited to photograph productions at the National Theater. He went on to become a founding photographer for Andy Warholís Interview and After Dark magazines. For Dance magazine, he produced many covers including those featuring the Joffrey Ballet, The Royal Ballet, and the Alvin Ailey Dance Company as well as co-authored a book Bejart: The World of Dance.

From his Melrose Avenue and Venice Beach studios Childers photographed over 200 magazine covers including GQ, New York, TV Guide, Esquire, Los Angeles, Elle, Paris Match, Life, London Sunday Times Magazine, and both English and Italian Vogue. He created more than 100 film posters for major motion picture studios and worked as a special photographer on dozens of films including Grease, Marathon Man, The Year of Living Dangerously, Coal Minerís Daughter, Pennies from Heaven, The Terminator, Hammett, Torch Song Trilogy, Endless Love and The Champ.

Childersí celebrated portraits include not only "Icons and Legends;" however. In the mid-1990s and reaching into the early 2000s, Michael was the west coast correspondent for Elle DÈcor. His stunning architectural and interior photographs from this period added to his illustrious career.

Michael has been involved in fundraising events for AIDS service organizations, foundations for the performing arts, and film organizations since 1989. In Los Angeles, Santa Fe, New York, and Palm Springs, events he has founded or helped produce have raised over twelve million dollars for these worthy causes. In 2003 he co-produced The Palm Springs Internetional Film Festival and in Los Angeles he also co-produced the BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Artists) Britannia Awards with Russell Crowe, Peter Weir, Angela Lansbury, Hugh Grant, Sandra Bullock, Alan Cumming, Robin Williams and Billy Connelly.

Michaelís work is in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Marion Museum of Photographic Studies in Santa Fe, the University of California Riverside photographic collections, the Palm Springs Desert Museum photographic collection, the Chiat Day Collection in Santa Monica, The Palm Springs Desert Museum, the Lincoln Center Library of Performing Arts in New York, and the Laguna Art Museum

Childers is finishing work on a new project Passionate Moves: Sensual Yoga for Couples, a lavishly illustrated photography book of beautifully toned prints featuring nude couples practicing yoga positions. Graphis Magazine has selected him as one of the 100 most important photographers of erotic art in the world. His work was featured in Masterpieces of Erotic Photography (1999), Femmes (2001), and Adonis (2001) from Carlton Books London. His work is also featured in Dream Boys I and II, from Studio Books Australia, Male Nudes Now (2002), from Rizzoli publications, and Eros by Carlton Books London - a collection of female nudes. Recent exhibitions include The Sensual in Photography (2002) at the BGH Gallery Santa Monica, The Lost Warhols, a collection of previously unpublished portraits of Andy Warhol, which debuted in Los Angeles at the Stephen Cohen Gallery and at the Lew Allen Gallery in Santa Fe. He also exhibited in the group show Dogs and Cats at the Stephen Cohen Gallery Los Angeles. About his successful exhibit at Couturier Gallery, LA Weekly enthused "Michael Childers is Helmut Newton disguised as Oscar Wilde in a wildly entertaining and stylized show." The Los Angeles Times said, "enjoy this theatrical and stylish show!"

Other exhibitions include the solo shows, Hollywood Voyeur and Famous ñ 40 Years of Celebrity Photography at the Erickson Gallery in Palm Springs; American Artists in Paris at the Louis Stern Fine Arts in Beverly Hills and the French Consulate in Los Angeles; Distortions in My Mind at the Jerry Miller Gallery in Palm Springs (April 2002), at Louis Stern Fine Arts in West Hollywood (July ñ September, 2002), and at the Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach (July ñ August, 2003); Icons and Idols ñ Gays and Lesbians in the Arts at the Peter Blake Gallery in Laguna Beach (June 2002). Trinity Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia with Connie Imboden, August 2002.

Michaelís work was featured at the APEX Gallery Los Angeles group shows entitled Tinsel with Eve Arnold, Sid Avery, Bob Willoughby and Loomis Dean; and Artists as Art with Harry Benson, Horst, Alfred Eisensteadt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Edward Steichen, and Phillippe Halsman. Other group shows in 2002 include City of AngelsÖGates of Hell at the Advocate Gallery in Los Angeles; I Shot Andy Warhol at the Fahey-Klein Gallery Los Angeles; and Photo LA, a photographic print exhibition at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium (shown through Louis Stern Fine Arts). Solo shows, Distortions in My Mind at the Louis Stern Fine Arts Gallery, August 2002; the Jerry Miller Gallery (Palm Springs, CA), and the Peter Blake Gallery (Laguna Beach) in 2003; Andy Warhol and David Hockney, and Distortions at Salon Prive in Santa Fe; The Photography of Michael Childers at Buschlen/Mowatt Galleries (Palm Desert, CA), and Michael Childers: 25 years with Photo Impact at the Gallery at Photo Impact in Hollywood, May 2004