[2] Michael Bailey-Gates grew up in Rhode Island where he worked an after school job at a photo studio.
The pictures referenced early motion-study photographs "without the gender norms traditional to classical portraiture".
[7][8] Chantal McStay, in a New York Times Style Magazine review of the exhibition, stated the photographs on display "evoked the aesthetics of classical portraiture as they upend conventions of gender and beauty.
[13] Bailey-Gates has modeled for the brands DKNY and CK One[14] as well as for the publications i-D, Arena Homme +, and Interview.
[16] In 2016, Michael Bailey-Gates appeared in his boyfriend Thomas Whiteside's book Route 1, Mike and India.