CONTACT

Commercial Inquiries: Melissa Schneider at hello@bespokeglobalagency.com

Email: studio@michaelchristopherbrown.com

Instagram: @michaelchristopherbrown

CV: Download HERE

Giulia Cassoro’s thesis on MCB: Download HERE

BIOGRAPHY

Michael Christopher Brown is an American photographer, author, filmmaker, guide and speaker whose work examines conflict, identity, and the psychological cost of bearing witness. Born in Washington State’s Skagit Valley and raised in a healthcare-focused family, he learned photography from his father, a physician who documented humanitarian work overseas, and was immersed early in service and storytelling through his family’s involvement in medical clinics in Mexico and a home shaped by cultural exchange.

A photographer with National Geographic since 2004 and a former Associate photographer at Magnum Photos, his work has been published and exhibited internationally. He became widely known for pioneering the use of smartphone photography in conflict reporting.

In 2011, while covering the Libyan Revolution in Misrata, he was kidnapped at gunpoint, ambushed and injured multiple times, and saw his friends the photographers Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros killed in front of him. Brown was critically injured by shrapnel in the same attack, which marked a turning point in both his life and vision and became central to the short film and book Libyan Sugar. The work, which combines imagery, personal narrative, and testimony to examine trauma, survival, and transformation, received the Paris Photo–Aperture First Book Award and the ICP Infinity Award for Artist’s Book.

Brown’s subsequent projects include Yo Soy Fidel, a book documenting the funeral cortège of Fidel Castro, and 90 Miles, the seminal and controversial AI reportage illustration work, which explores AI and photo-realistic looking imagery and was cited by French PHOTO magazine as the “first reportage with AI.” His forthcoming book with Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, The Difference Between Bullets and Stones, will be published in 2026. He is currently writing a memoir in the form of an extended letter to his daughter, tracing a life shaped by war toward fatherhood.

As a filmmaker, he contributed to several documentaries and was a central subject and cinematographer for Witness: Libya, directed by Michael Mann, and Land Rover. In 2025 he wrote a screenplay based on the life of Sgt. Madot Dagbinza, a Congolese army commando he documented for The New York Times Magazine. He is co-directing a Cuba-based film with Alyse Ardell Spiegel, drawing on archival material made during the creation of Yo Soy Fidel and his forthcoming book Ondas, to be released alongside the film. 

He is based in Los Angeles.

CLIENTS

AARP. Aga Khan Museum. Al Jazeera. Amazon Music. Amnesty International. Bloomberg Businessweek. CSIS. Chopard. Conde Nast Portfolio. Conservation International. D La Repubblica. Der Spiegel. Eastern Congo Initiative. Economist. ESPN. Facebook. Financial Times. Fondazione Oelle. Foreign Policy. Fortune. FT Weekend Magazine. Front Line Defenders. GEO. Getty Images. Harper’s Magazine. Harvard Public Health. HBO. Hemispheres. Hyperice. IISS. Ishkar. Land Rover. Land Securities. Le Monde. Live Nation. Magnum Photos. Memac Ogilvy. Men’s Journal. Mobil. Moleskine. Monocle. MSNBC. National Geographic Magazine. New York Magazine. Newsweek. Nike. Nodle. Oprah Winfrey Network. PDN. Pipette. Polka. Redfitz. Save the Children. Smithsonian. Smith & Nephew. Sony. Stanford Medicine X. SYPartners. Tecno Mobile. The Atlantic. The Nature Conservancy. The New Republic. The New York Times. The New York Times Magazine. The New York Times Style Magazine. Time. United Nations. U.S. Army. U.S. Department of State. Vanity Fair. Ventiquattro. Vice. Vogue. Wall Street Journal. Wired. Young & Rubicam. YouthBuild.