Mike Mandel

I have been a practicing artist since the early 1970s. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley during a period of expansion and transformation of the landscape that included the appearance of billboards, strip malls, and miles of freeways. This experience informs much of my work which questions the meaning of photographic imagery within popular culture and draws from snapshots, advertising, news photographs, and public and corporate archives. Much of my early work was made in collaboration with artist Larry Sultan. Currently I work as an artist in the field of public art. I also collaborate with my wife, Chantal Zakari, on projects such as the book, The State of Ata, which will be published in the spring of 2010.