Michael Childers has been a renowned and highly respected film, dance, and theater photographer for forty years. Since 1996, he has been working solely with fine art photography and on book projects.

Born in North Carolina, Childers graduated from UCLA Film School where he directed student films and began his photography career by studying with Robert Heineken and Edward 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 Olivier's National Theater in London.

He remains the only American photographer invited to photograph the National Theater's productions. He went on to become a founding photographer for Andy Warhol's 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.

Michael's 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 Lincoln Center Library of Performing Arts in New York, and the Laguna Art Museum.

His lover since 1976 is John Schlesinger.