I don’t know how many of you knew Michael Alvarez, but if you did, please offer your condolences to his family during this time.
I will miss him greatly.

Michael Robert Alvarez
February 08, 1966 – July 24, 2022
A lot of you know I used to teach photography at Mt. Whitney when I was working for the after-school joint, but not a lot of you know that Mike was the one that helped me turn a dusty-ass darkroom in working order, sold me all the film, paper and bulbs from Mike’s Quality Camera (before we lost it to a mediocre brewpub) and helped me fine-tune all the enlargers so that my students could come into a turnkey workspace. If it wasn’t for Mike, I would not have been able to teach photography at Mt. Whitney. He was a photographer without an ego and only ever lived by the tenet of “each one, teach one”. Society is usually wrongfully measured by it’s technological advances and how much individual wealth each of us can attempt to hoard but I like to think that we can measure it by the kindness that only people like Mike can bring into it. We should all feel extremely lucky that we lived in a the same timeline as Mike and, if he was able to help you nurture your own talent, you were one of the the lucky ones. Now that’s a legacy fit for a king.
Thank you, Mike. For everything. 🥺