Michael Neff is based in San Franciscoand has worked across screenprinting,chalk-marked street photography,and AI-generated imagery.He was born in Seattle, Washington, earned a BFA in photography with a minor in printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design, and lived in New York City.
While based in New York, he made several photographic series, including Chalk, Stalking New York, and 60 Minutes from New York.,,For Chalk, made on the city's streets from 2006, he outlined objects in chalk on the pavement and then photographed the markings.,In 2008 he chalked outlines around David Byrne's New York City bicycle racks, and Byrne's own website later linked to the resulting photographs on Neff's Flickr page. A 2002 screenprint, Red Sky By Morning, was acquired by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney in 2004. His prints were also included several times in the International Print Center New York's New Prints exhibitions between 2010 and 2012, a series that traveled in 2012 to the Visual Arts Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
Neff has also worked in software product design, leading design teams in business-to-business software and advising companies on design leadership. His series Rules of the Game pits AI-generated images against photographs, an idea he described as putting the two “on the field of competition”.It was released as an edition of 50 on Verse on April 15, 2024, sold through a 24-hour rebate auction with no reserve price.The series was also included among Verse's curator picks.His work has also appeared in the group exhibition “MORE.zip”, presented by Heft.
