04/22/2026
“As I age, while I still have time, I yearn to know now, more than ever, my true self, that random and illusive thing, decorated with personality. We believe ourselves to be this kaleidoscope of passions and distractions. We are a brilliant and unknown moment, suspended between memory and anticipation, anxious in our uncertainties, and doomed to fade with our consciousness. How can such a mystery be photographed? What is left for us but amazement?”
Duane Michals is a self-taught American photographer who revolutionized the medium in the 1960s by moving away from traditional photojournalism to explore the invisible world of the human psyche. Michals pioneered the use of narrative sequences, series of images that function like film strips, to tell complex, surreal stories. With his portraiture, he asserted that a photograph cannot truly reveal a person’s inner nature but that his subjects allowed the viewer to see what they wanted us to see about them.
Written by Elaina Fleming, Graduate Class of 2027