Room 227 opens to public at 5:30 p.m.
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Join us for an evening with world-renowned photographer, Duane Michals and legendary creative director, Sam Shahid as they discuss the conceptual and design process of Michals' new military memoir The Lieutenant Who Loved His Platoon. Duane Michals also reads several passages from the book, and be available for a post-event book signing.
The discussion is moderated by Arezoo Moseni.

In this new and intimate military memoir, Michals speaks candidly about his experience as an insecure and green second lieutenant during the Korean War. He also shares his witty views on same-sex marriage, gays in the military, the state of heterosexuality and "God's straight people plague." The book is ancored by never before published personal letters, between Michals and his friends Richard MacFadden and Helen McDonald, and by never before seen photographs taken by a young Michals during his time in the Army of the United States (1953-1955).

Duane Michals (b. 1932, McKeesport, Pa.) received a BA from the University of Denver in 1953 and worked as a graphic designer until his involvement with photography deepened in the late 1950s. 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 his singular musings. Balancing fragility and strength, gravity and humor, Michals’s work represents universal themes such as love, desire, memory, death, and immortality.

Over the past five decades, Michals’s work has been collected and exhibited at major venues worldwide including the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the George Eastman House, Rochester; the Odakyu Museum, Tokyo; the International Center of Photography, New York and the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland. In 2008, Michals celebrated his 50^th anniversary as a photographer with a retrospective exhibition at the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, Greece and the Scavi Scaligeri in Verona, Italy. In recognition of his contributions to photography, Michals has been honored with a CAPS Grant (1975), a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship (1976), the International Center of Photography Infinity Award for Art (1989), the Foto Espana International Award (2001), and an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, Massachusetts. (2005).

Monographs of Michals’s work include Homage to Cavafy (1978); Nature of Desire (1989); Duane Michals: Now Becoming Then (1990); Salute, Walt Whitman (1996); The Essential Duane Michals (1997); Questions without Answers (2001); The House I Once Called Home (2003), Foto Follies/How Photography Lost Its Virginity on the Way to the Bank (2006) and Photographs from the Floating World (2012). Michals’s archive is housed at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. He is represented by Pace/MacGill Gallery.

Sam Shahid has been shaping the image and impact of advertising for over 25 years. First making an indelible mark as Vice President and Creative Director for CRK Advertising and Calvin Klein in the 1980s, Shahid’s résumé continues to expand its influence. Established in 1993, the clientele for his eponymous Shahid & Company, Inc. has encompassed the worlds of fashion, publishing, sports, and beauty, and their roster has included Abercrombie and Fitch, Versace, Interview Magazine, Banana Republic, Asprey and many more. And serving as Art Director for over sixty books, including Kelly Klein’s Pools, Bruce Weber’s Branded Youth and O Rio de Janeiro, Ellen Von Unwerth’s Snaps, Herb Ritt’s Africa, Jessica’s Lange’s 50 Photographs, and Joel Grey’s 1.3: Images from My Phone, provides a new vehicle for Shahid’s legacy of refined design.

Initiated and organized by Arezoo Moseni in 2004, Artist Dialogues Series provide an open forum for understanding and appreciation of contemporary art. Artists are paired with critics, curators, gallerists, writers or other artists to converse about art and the potential of exploring new ideas.