During the Korean War, Sonny became a second lieutenant in armor when he was a green twenty-one and luckily exported to Deutschland. The alternative Korea certainly would have been his great goodbye.
Now a civilian again, Duane Michals was hired at TIME, Inc. as a graphic designer. On a lark, Duane went to Russia, as a tourist, with a borrowed camera and found his bliss, photography. The trip changed his life. By accident he met Danny Entin, a professional photographer, who gave him the keys to his studio so that Sonny could make portraits of his friends for fun on weekends. And so he did.