Michael Stimola was born in New York City, lived in New Jersey with his wife and two daughters, and now lives year-round in West Tisbury, MA. He is largely self-taught and has been making photographs for nearly two decades. After studying at the International Center of Photography and the School of Visual Arts in New York City, he set out to define his photographic vision through experimentation and the close study of the work of other artists, especially Pictorialist photographers, Tonalist painters and contemporary Cyanotype artists. His work explores the interplay of memories, associations and expectations in everyday visual perception.

Much of Michael’s work centers on Martha’s Vineyard. While most of his photographs are archival pigment prints, his process often employs a favorite mode of expressing his abiding fascination with and love for the Island’s landscape: hand-made gilded vellum prints. He also employs the 19th Century Cyanotype process to make contact prints as well as camera and lenless abstract prints employing Cyanotype chemistry and local sea and pond water and their organic contents.

His photographs have been selected for exhibition in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Toronto, and Vermont. His Cyanotype contact prints have been selected for juried exhibitions of Alternative Photographic Processes at New York City’s SohoPhoto Gallery in 2022 and Toronto’s Silvershack Gallery in 2024. His cameraless, abstract Cyanotype work has been selected for inclusion in Alternative Photography, ART & ARTISTS, Edition 2, 2025.

He is a winner of Color Magazine’s 2009 Portfolio Competition and is profiled in Issue # 8, Spring 2010. Additionally, he is a Black & White Magazine Excellence Award winner and is featured in Issue # 76, August 2010 Special Portfolio Contest Award Issue. He was the subject of an Artist Profile in the Summer 2012 issue of Vineyard Style Magazine. He was profiled in the August 23, 2023, Issue of the Martha’s Vineyard Times; “Pushing the Boundaries Through Michael Stimola’s Unique Lens.”