Michi

Hi, I’m Michi Masumi, an award-winning photographer, poet, digital artist, and Photo Creative Technologist based in Medway, Kent. I am also a Digital & Intersectional Anthropologist and Ethnographic Technocultural Theorist, with a practice rooted in visual storytelling, cultural research, and creative resistance.  I specialise in fine art portrait photography and photo art portraits, and I create photography-based digital and AI mixed media artwork that explores identity, emotion, and cultural memory. My work often centres Black women and the African diaspora, challenging dominant narratives and amplifying stories that are too often overlooked.  As a neurodivergent Black woman, I bring an embodied, intersectional lens to everything I create. My style is intentional, expressive, and deeply influenced by my lived experience. I use photography as both a research tool and an artistic medium, one that honours both tradition and experimentation.  I’ve been awarded two Silver Honorable Mention Awards by the London Photography Awards, and my practice is at the heart of my Full time PhD research on Black British photography-based visual art, Black AI, and identity. Alongside exhibitions and editorial portraiture, I run therapeutic photography and “phoetry” (photo + poetry) workshops, empowering others to use visual art for healing and self-expression.  I founded the black Art Hub CIC and The Benjamin Zephaniah Digital Library, which is still in development, and it is a vital part of my commitment to community work and archive-building projects. I aim to document, elevate, and reimagine what representation can look like through the Black British gaze, especially for women, through contemporary counternarration.  Let’s connect and collaborate to shape bold new narratives through image-making, technology, heritage, and culture.