Duane Michals: Things are Queer

Appearing in 1970, Duane MichalsÆ Sequences became one of the key photography books of the decade. MichalsÆ concise narratives, typically composed of six or seven uncaptioned images, were surreal, provocative, mysteriousùand sometimes flat-out funny. They fueled a radically new direction for a generation of artists exploring the fictional potential of photography. Critic Jed Perl, reviewing a traveling retrospective organized by PittsburghÆs Carnegie Museums in 2014, called the sequences of small, black-and-white images ôfreshly minted fairy tales for adults. These surreal visual fables were shown at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970, when the museum was the arbiter of all things photographic. [à] With [his] cosmic-comic sequences, Michals became photographyÆs genial troublemaker, seen by some as thumbing his nose at the lyric realism of Henri CartierBressonÆs ædecisive momentÆ and Alfred StieglitzÆs perfect prints. What can all too easily be underestimated is the quick, agile intelligence that Michals