Michael Freeman is the world’s top author of photography books, drawing on a long career as a widely published international editorial photographer. He has published to date 138 books, of which 67 are on the practice of photography, with 4 million copies sold, published in 27 languages. He has an MA in Geography from Oxford University, and in a career spanning 40 years has worked for most of the world’s leading publishers, including Time-Life, GEO, the Sunday Times Magazine and the Smithsonian Magazine, with which he has had a 30-year, 40-story relationship.

Much of his work has focused on Asia, beginning in the early days with Thailand, expanding outwards through other countries in Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, with several books published on Angkor and other Khmer sites. This was followed by several years photographing in Japan, and more recently, China. His most recent book of documentary reportage is Tea Horse Road, tracing the ancient trade route that began in the 7th century between southwest China and Tibet. Before that was the 2005 Sudan: Land and People, still the only full visual record of the (now two) countries.

On the craft of photography, Freeman’s best-selling volume is The Photographer’s Eye, which has sold more than a million copies to date. He conducts photography workshops in locations as varied as the Gulf states, Indonesia, Singapore and China, and speaks regularly on photography, at venues varying from the the Royal Geographical Society, to the Smithsonian in Washington and the Asia Society in New York.

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