“Contradicting reality is a great gift, or weapon, that photographers have,” says Duane Michals. “My gift to you is not to tell you what you know, it’s to surprise you.” And surprise us he has, over a long and celebrated career. Using motion-blurred shots, double exposure, and the narrative instincts of a director, Michals has poetically and often comically explored doubt, mortality, and desire. The Morgan presents Michals’s first New York City retrospective, in which his own work is joined by pieces he reveres from the Morgan’s vaults. —E.C.