Martin Filler
Good Soldier Michals
There is an intangible quality about Duane Michals’s photographs that is readily identifiable, regardless of their subject matter. Whether they ponder questions as speculative as the existence of an afterlife or as basic as the nature of sexual desire all of them encompass a shared spiritual terrain, a timeless realm of pellucid light and preternatural calm, palpably present but also eerily elusive, like a waking dream. Yet Michals’s most significant contribution may be his championing of an elevated homoerotic alternative to the predominant heterosexual viewpoint of western art. Thus the publication of this quiet crusader’s photo-memoir—which recounts Michals’ own repressed sexuality while serving in the army from 1953 to 1955—seems particularly timely following the recent revocation of the US Army’s preposterous “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” policy.
February 16, 2012