Originally hailing from Toronto, Canada, Michelle Groskopf is a Los Angeles based photographer. Her work is a mix of photo journalism, portraiture and street photography. She holds a BFA in film and video production from the School Of Visual Arts in New York where she also taught as an adjunct professor in the graduate film and video dept. She is a member of the celebrated flash photography collective Full Frontal Flash. Michelle is dedicated to empowering youth through photography and education initiatives working with the Lucie Foundation, Educare and Youth Arts to inspire the next generation of photographers and artists. Her work has been shown around the world and featured in publications such as The British Journal Of Photography, American Photo, The Huffington Post, Vice Magazine and It’s Nice That, among others. Her clients include, Refinery 29, Bloomberg Businessweek, Vice Magazine, Marie Claire France, Aftenposten, and Stern Magazine. Her first monograph is being published by The Magenta Foundation and will be released in the fall of 2017.  Topics Discussed In This Episode: Making thematic work Her early life/work as a filmmaker and producer How she became a photographer Visual iconography Outside forces polluting ideas Her experiences living in Hollywood The path of least resistance Physical and emotional stress Larry Sultan Thinking about life as a marathon as opposed to a sprint Changing the idea of success Romanticizing the artist lifestyle Seeing the light at the end of a dark and hopeless tunnel Looking at other mediums of art for inspiration Over intellectualizing artwork The “Full Frontal Flash” photography collective Finding a community www.artistdecoded.com