Illusions of the Photographer: Duane Michals at the Morgan

October 25, 2019 through February 2, 2020 Contemplative, confessional, and comedic, the art of Duane Michals exerts an appeal that transcends the conventional audience of photography. Since the early 1960s, Michals has worked past what he sees as the limitations of the camera: he writes in the margins of his prints, creates sequences of images that explore intangible human dilemmas (doubt, mortality, desire), and derives poetic effects from technical errors such as double exposure and motion blur. Illusions of the Photographer combines a full career retrospective—the first on Michals to be organized by a New York City museum—with an artist’s-choice show, as Michals plumbs the Morgan’s vaults for treasures both revered and long-forgotten.