Michelle Kawka - Summer Sunday at Coney Island

Michelle Kawka

Michelle Kawka is an award winning, internationally exhibited New York photographer specializing in portraiture, wedding, corporate, fashion, travel, and public relations work for a wide variety of corporate and editorial clients. A Wesleyan University graduate, and student of European literature, philosophy and history, she discovered her love of photography while studying Italian language in Padova, Italy. The success of the resulting senior essay and its accompanying photographic exhibit led her to further study of photographic arts at the New England School of Photography in Boston, and at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Since 2001, Michelle has been an active professional photographer, using her uniquely bold, graphic and emotional style for clients from coast to coast. In addition to her commercial work, she continues to pursue artistic projects. Her work has been exhibited at the Queens Museum of Art, the City Hall of the 9th Arrondissement, Paris France, Discover Queens Tourist Office, the Queens Hospital Center, The Langston Hughes Cultural Center & Library, the Gallery of Social and Political Art in Boston, the New England School of Photography & the Art-o-Mat in Long Island City, NY. Michelle also serves as Vice President of the American Society of Media Photographers New York Chapter. She completed a series of 200 portraits for the website This Is Our Queens, a project depicting the lives of the people who live and work in her neighborhood, Queens, New York, which she describes as “the most diverse place on Earth.” This Is Our Queens was named one of the best projects of 2009 by the American Society of Media Photographers. In 2007, her short film, “Animal Farm”, an adaptation of George Orwell’s novel, was screened at the Sunnyside Shorts Film Festival and was shown in the Culture Unplugged Studios online film festival “We Speak Here” in June 2010.