Duane Michals pushed the boundaries of what was possible in fine art photography.
Born to a working-class Catholic Czech family in 1932, Michals got his artistic start taking watercolour classes at the age of 14. After serving two years in the U.S. army, Michals took a vacation to the USSR in 1958 with a camera he borrowed from a friend—igniting what would become his main mode of expression.
By 1961, Michals was working as a commercial photographer for magazines like Esquire and Mademoiselle. Over his long career, Michals crafted unique portraits of stars like Johnny Cash, Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Tilda Swinton, Andy Warhol, Jacob Elordi, Robin Williams and even one of his major inspirations—Surrealist René Magritte.
Michals’s work was by no means conventional. In his personal and professional photographs, Michals often utilized double exposures, slow shutter speeds and other forms of manipulation to create surreal images.
Michals was self-taught and largely uninhibited by conventional norms, which allowed for his unique style of narrative storytelling. In 1966, he staged scenes that played out across several photographs, almost like an animation of film frames. One of the most notable—and queer—examples of these works is Chance Meeting from 1970, which illustrates two men in suits checking each other out on an empty street.
In 1974, he pushed the boundaries further by writing poetry and prose onto his images, adding additional commentary and combating the age-old phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words.”
Michals’s work throughout his career asked narrative and philosophical questions. He interrogated and played with themes of the self, death, religion and the fine line between fact and fiction.
Michals intentionally explored queer sexuality in his work. In his 1978 book, Homage to Cavafy, he paired text by Greek poet Constantine Cavafy with his photographs exploring homoeroticism, aging and loss.
Michals lived openly as a gay man throughout his career. His relationship with architect Frederick Gorrée spanned nearly six decades until Gorrée’s death in 2017.
Michals passed away on June 9, 2026, at the age of 94, but his contributions to queer art live on.
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