10/06/2026
Duane Michals (1932–2026), the celebrated photographer known for interweaving image and text to create poetic and moving narratives, has died aged 94.
Born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, Michals discovered photography during a three-week trip to Russia in 1958 with a borrowed camera. Returning to New York, he began publishing photographs in magazines including Esquire and Vogue, launching a career that would span more than six decades.
Michals is best known for pioneering photographic sequences, constructing frame-by-frame narratives that challenged the conventions of the medium. Often incorporating multiple exposures and photographic blur, these works explored themes of desire, mortality and the spiritual, expanding photography beyond what Henri Cartier-Bresson called the ‘decisive moment’.
In the 1970s, Michals began handwriting texts directly onto his photographs, allowing meaning to unfold through the relationship between image and language. This approach became a defining feature of his practice and remained central to his many photobooks and exhibitions. While predominantly known as a photographer, Michals also directed short films later in life, extending the cinematic sensibility that had long shaped his still-image work.
Famously energetic, Michals remained active into his 90s. In 2025, he photographed Jacob Elordi for a Bottega Veneta campaign and presented ‘The Nature of Desire’, an exhibition focused on the male form, at DC Moore in New York.
His work endures as one of the most innovative contributions to contemporary photography, transforming the medium through narrative, imagination and the interplay of image and text.
Images:
1. Portrait of Duane Michals, 1979. Courtesy: Getty Images; photograph: Anthony Barboza
2. Duane Michals, 'Self Portrait with My Guardian Angel', 1974. Courtesy: New Orleans Museum of Art
