[1] Michals's work makes innovative use of photo-sequences, often incorporating text to examine emotion and philosophy.

[2] Michals's interest in art began at age 14 while attending watercolor university classes at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh.

[4] The photographs he made during this trip became his first exhibition held in 1963 at the Underground Gallery in New York City.

For a number of years, Michals was a commercial photographer, working for Esquire and Mademoiselle, and he covered the filming of The Great Gatsby for Vogue (1974).

Instead, he took portraits of people in their environment, which was a contrast to the method of other photographers at the time, such as Avedon and Irving Penn.

Michals also produced the art for the album Synchronicity (by The Police) in 1983,[3][5] and Clouds Over Eden by Richard Barone in 1993.

[10] Michals cites Balthus, William Blake, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Eakins, René Magritte, and Walt Whitman as influences on his art.