Michael Dweck

Michael Dweck (born September 26, 1957) is an American visual artist and filmmaker.

Best known for his narrative photography, Dweck's work "explores ongoing struggles between identity and adaptation in endangered societal enclaves."

Born in 1957 in Brooklyn, Dweck grew up in Bellmore, Long Island, attending John F. Kennedy High School and then Brooklyn's Pratt Institute to study architecture, communication and fine arts.

Dweck was born in Brooklyn in 1957 to David and Sydelle Dweck.

The family moved to Bellmore, a town on Long Island about 27 miles east of Manhattan, where David worked as accountant.

Dweck's father presented him with his first camera on the occasion of the 1964 New York World's Fair.

Dweck graduated from Bellmore's John F. Kennedy High School in 1975.

He then attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

Initially an architecture student, Dweck switched to communication and fine arts in 1976 at the suggestion of the department, who told him that humor had no place in architecture after he chose to design a house for Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken for a school project.

For another project, he designed an AT&T building to resemble a gigantic phone booth.

After receiving his bachelor's degree in 1979, he went on to study with artist James Wines and with semiotician Marshall Blonsky at The New School for Social Research.

While studying at the Pratt Institute, Dweck was exposed to the creative workings of several prominent New York-based advertising agencies, including DDB and Young & Rubicam.

Following graduation, seeking to escape the frustration of what he considered to be an uninspirational creative environment, Dweck set out in 1980 to found his own firm, Michael Dweck & Co. In 1992, Lori Campbell joined the firm as a partner to form Dweck & Campbell.

The team quickly earned a reputation for edgy and unconventional work with a mischievous sense of humor.

CNN called Dweck a “creative prodigy.” AdWeek's Tim Nudd dubbed him "a master of the absurd."

Producer Larry Shanet, who contributed to many of the agency's television commercials and went on to win numerous industry awards, said of Dweck, "He's not a cookie-cutter guy, and he doesn't make cookie-cutter work."

Well-known clients included MTV, Swatch, Comedy Central and Dial-a-Mattress.

Dweck & Campbell's second television advertisement, promoting retailer Giant Carpet, depicted George H. W. Bush during the waning days of his administration vandalizing the White House carpets for then-incoming president Bill Clinton.

Clinton's communications director George Stephanopoulos telephoned Dweck to complain that he had "stag[ed] the mock killing of a president-elect."

Under political pressure, network ABC withdrew the ad, but the agency managed to land five slots on NBC's popular late-night comedy show Saturday Night Live.

"We knew we'd hit a home run," Dweck said.

Over the next eighteen months, Giant Carpet expanded its operations from four stores to 42.

Still better known was the agency's 1998 television spot for Dial-a-Mattress, which featured a cantankerous man-sized Arctic ground squirrel purchasing a mattress on which to hibernate for the winter.

The ad, noted for its comic abrasiveness, was pulled from the airwaves after only 13 days.

It then went on to win a Gold Lion award at the Cannes International Advertising Festival, and was selected for inclusion in both the Gale Group's 100 most influential marketing campaigns of the year and Boards magazine's Top 10 Boards awards of 1999.

In April 1999, Lori Campbell left the firm, which was renamed Dweck, Inc., or more simply "Dweck!", with Dweck as chairman and sole creative director.

The agency continued to pursue its unorthodox aesthetic sensibilities, and by seventeen months after Campbell's departure had more than doubled its previous year's billings to $50 million.

Nearly immediately following the reorganization, Dweck!

won the American Association of Advertising Agencies' O'Toole Creative Award for best small agency in the United States.

Later in 1999, Dweck!'s spots for Top Driver driving school and UPN won awards from

Art Directors Club, Association of Independent Commercial Producers, One Club for Art & Copy and the New York Addys.

Bennett Miller, later best known as the Academy Award-winning director of Capote, helped create Dweck!'s spots for Top Driver, in which hidden cameras recorded conversations between instructors and students.

These spots were recognized as the Best Low-Budget Campaign by London International Advertising Awards.

Upon graduation, Dweck founded Michael Dweck & Co., later known as Dweck & Campbell, winning a number of advertising industry awards before closing the firm in 2001 to pursue his artistic interests.

In July 2001, Dweck closed the agency and left advertising to concentrate on photography.

"I'm a creative," said Dweck, "and I want to get back to working just on creative."

After closing his advertising agency, in 2002 Dweck began to photograph subjects and scenes around Montauk, focusing on its surfing subculture.

In 2003, he became the first living photographer to have a solo exhibition at Sotheby's, and in 2012, he was the first American photographer to exhibit his work in Cuba since the beginning of the United States embargo in 1960.

He lives and works in New York City and in Montauk, New York.

Over the next decade, Dweck built a substantial reputation in fine art photography with works including The End: Montauk, N.Y. (2004,) Mermaids (2008,) and Habana Libre (2011.) In recent years Dweck's artwork has branched into other media including sculpture and filmmaking, with his first feature-length film The Last Race premiering at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.