Michael Abramson

• Name — Michael L. Abramson • Birth Name — Michael L. Abramson • Born — 11 October 1948 • Birthplace — Jersey City, New Jersey, United States • Died — 21 March 2011 • Place of death — Chicago, Illinois, United States • Illustration — Dance Scene at Perv's House; Photo taken during the mid-1970s on Chicago's South side.

Born in Jersey City, Abramson graduated from Columbia High School in nearby Maplewood. He earned a bachelor's degree from the Wharton School of Business in Philadelphia, but his life took a different turn when he was accepted at the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, where he earned a master's degree in 1977. His thesis, "Black Night Clubs of Chicago's South Side," was a reflection and analysis of the photographs he took of patrons and performers in multiple nightclubs on Chicago's south side during the mid-1970s. Abramson's images have often been compared to those of the photographer Brassaï (1899–1984), who captured Paris by night in the 1920s. Abramson decided to stay in Chicago, where for two years following graduation he taught photography as a part-time instructor. He quickly realized that teaching was not his calling, but subsequently found satisfaction in freelance photography. Throughout his long career, his assignments increasingly came from national news publications, such as Time, Forbes, Newsweek, Business Week, Fortune, & Bloomberg. Notable subjects included Steven Spielberg, Michael Jordan, Ron Howard, Oprah Winfrey, Donald Rumsfeld, Louis Farrakhan, Bill Clinton, and Steve Jobs. Today his commercial work is managed by Getty Images. Abramson had two brief marriages, both ending in divorce within two years. In 1999, he began dating DePaul Professor Midge Wilson, and the two continued their relationship until Abramson's death from cancer on March 21, 2011. Abramson stipulated in his will that Wilson preserve his vintage photographs and act to insure his legacy.

Since 2011, Abramson's South side images have been displayed at multiple galleries and museums, including the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago (2014), Fotographie Forum in Frankfurt, Germany (2017), Benhadj-Djilali Gallerie in Berlin (2018), MMX Gallery in London (2018), Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon (2018), Candela Unbound! Gallery in Richmond, Virginia (2018), and at The Rangefinder Gallery in Chicago (2019) Today Abramson's photographs are archived in permanent collections at the Smithsonian, Art Institute of Chicago, California Museum of Photography, Chicago History Museum, and the Milwaukee Art Museum.