Michals made significant, creative strides in the field of
photography during the 1960s. In an era heavily influenced
by photojournalism and its aesthetic, Michals manipulated
the medium to communicate narratives using a distinctive
pictorial technique. The sequences, for which he is widely
known, appropriate cinema’s frame-by-frame format.
Comprising single prints, each sequence depicts the
unfolding of an event or reveals various perspectives on a
specific subject. Michals has also incorporated text as a
key component in his single and multipart works. Rather than
serving a didactic or explanatory function, his handwritten
text adds another dimension to the images’ meaning and gives
voice to Michals’s singular musings. Balancing fragility and
strength, gravity and humor, Michals’s work represents
universal themes such as love, desire, memory, death, and
immortality.
Michals lives and works in New York City.