Michael Cirelli

Michael Cirelli (b. 1979, Manchester, NH) is a New Hampshire based Photographer, Filmmaker, and Photography Educator that has documented the culture of skateboarding and other topics for the last 20 plus years. His passion for photography and the arts started back when he was a high school student, working in a small darkroom developing and printing my photos at Suffield Academy in CT, he enrolled at Cleveland Institute of Art for his BFA and had every intention of majoring in painting but quickly changed his path to photography. In his third year at Cleveland, he took advantage of the school’s Mobility program, which allowed him to study at Parsons School of Design in New York City.

It was during that time that he found a job at the Polaroid 20×24 Studio, home to a famously large camera that weighs 225 pounds and measures five feet tall. There are only five such cameras in the world, and the chance to work with such a large photographic canvas attracts photographers from across the country. Michael got to assist photographers like William Wegam, Chuck Close and Mary Ellen Mark. To this day, he owes a lot of his success and knowledge in photography to his experiences with the Polaroid studio. It was really inspiring to see how so many different photographers used the same camera to showcase their personal vision.

In 2002, he moved to New Hampshire to open his photography business and also started teaching photography to high school students. He currently teaches photography full-time at Windham High School and freelances. He graduated from the Visual Arts MFA program at Lesley University and have continued to create photographs and short web-based films with companies such as Matix Clothing, Red Bull, Nike SB, Venture Trucks, UXA NYC, self-published three photography books and started a clothing brand with a friend called New Hampshire Apparel.

Michael’s work was featured in ‘Group Effort,’ on view August 10-September 1, 2024.

“This is an ongoing photographic project documenting basketball hoops at peoples homes, parks, and publics spaces.”