Michal Heiman

Michal Heiman was born in 1955 in Tel Aviv

Michal Heiman was born in Tel Aviv in 1955. Her father was a civil and mechanical engineer and her mother was a homemaker.

In 1977 she began studying art history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem while working in a photo shop. She left and studied photography at Hadassah College in Jerusalem in 1978 and 1979. She then studied at Hamidrash School of Art from 1982 to 1984.

Alongside her art she worked as a portrait photographer for the press and the cultural world. Her work combines photography, psychoanalysis, history and human rights, with a focus on women's rights. She founded the Photographer Unknown Archive in 1984 and created the Michal Heiman Tests.

She represented Israel at Documenta X in Kassel in 1997 and held solo shows at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2008 and the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art in 2017. In 2010 she was the first winner of the Shpilman International Prize for Excellence in Photography. She teaches at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design.

In 2015 she founded Women in Academia to advance gender equality at Bezalel. In 2018 she founded the public-benefit company An Academy of Her Own. She has 2 children.