Born in 1967 in Tel Aviv, Israel, Michael Ackerman moved with his family to New York in 1974 and began to practice photography on a self-taught basis. He explores the city streets, nightclubs as well as various communities. In 1993, he made his first trip to India, where he returned several times thereafter. The themes of wandering and exile run through all of his work, as evidenced by his photographic wanderings in New York, Benares, Krakow and Havana. Winner of the Nadar Prize in 1999 for the first edition of End Time City, he also published Fiction in 2001 and Half Life in 2010.
His work is regularly presented at exhibitions and festivals around the world, notably Les Rencontres d'Arles in 2006 and 2016, Images Singulières in Sète in 2010 and Foto Leggendo in Rome in 2017. He is represented in France by the Camera Obscura gallery. Michael Ackerman regularly collaborates with filmmakers and musicians around screenings of his work. He lives and works in Berlin.