Michael Alan Lang

Michael Alan Lang, of Washington, D.C., died Monday Feb. 9 of complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 83.

Born in the Bronx in New York City on June 25, 1942, Mike moved to Baltimore as a child. At age 7, he contracted polio and spent six months in the hospital, narrowly avoiding the iron lung but coming home with paralysis in his right leg.

Mike attended City College High School and became interested in photography at age 14, when he was given a Leica camera and darkroom equipment. As a teenager, he would take the camera to Baltimore streets and pool halls. While he dreamed of becoming a photojournalist, he assumed that his physical limitations would make that impossible. Instead, he put himself through Loyola College of Maryland, where he became interested in science, going on to earn a Ph.D. in biophysics from the University of Maryland.

After Maryland, he did postdoctoral research at the University of California San Francisco, the Technion in Haifa, Israel, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Harvard Medical School and at Boston University, where he became an associate professor. From Boston, he moved to Maryland for a research position at the National Institutes of Health. He later transitioned to an administrative role in research grant review, running a study section on cell physiology.

His passion, however, was his photography, and he was rarely without a camera in his free time. He set up darkrooms in the basements of his various homes, including in Takoma Park, Maryland, where he moved after he married his second wife, Anita Miller. In 2000, he opened a show at the Touchstone Gallery of the photos he took as a teenager at the pool halls of Baltimore in the 1950s, complete with an oral history. The show received rave reviews from local art critics, with the Washington Post calling it "miraculous" and the Baltimore Sun noting that he had captured "with sublime results the quotidian ballet of people going about their business and amusement." As he neared and entered retirement from the NIH, Mike did extensive projects focused on photography, documenting the Hill tribes of Thailand, a rural community in Mississippi and drag queens in Washington, D.C. For more than a quarter-century, he was a dedicated member of the Touchstone Gallery, particularly after he and his wife moved to a condo in Shaw in 2006. In addition to photography, he enjoyed jazz, reading and classic movies.

Over the years, post-polio syndrome further weakened both legs, leaving him essentially paralyzed below the waist. From hikes through the woods as a Boy Scout to photography trips in rural Thailand, Mike navigated the world walking with the assistance of leg braces, canes and crutches. He pushed himself physically, becoming so proficient as a swimmer that he was a Red Cross certified lifeguard and instructor, and participating in activities such as adaptive skiing, horseback riding and weightlifting. When told recently that one of his granddaughters had stalled in her progress learning to drive because she broke her right ankle, he asked why she hadn't used her left leg instead.

He is survived by his wife, Anita Miller, his brothers Darryl Peter Lang (Bracha) and Eric Lang (Elaine), his sons Ben Lang (Maria) and Dan Lang, his stepdaughters, Anya Webb (Jason) and Katrina Sostek and his first wife, Roslyn Lang. He is also survived by seven grandchildren: Ava Blanca Liliana Lang, Isabel Paloma Lang, Elsie Michelle Webb, June Marie Webb, Juliet Hays Webb, Thomas Hays Webb and Gwendolyn Miller Grosfield. He was predeceased by his parents, Gertrude and Abraham Lang, and his sister, Carol Sager.

A memorial service will be held at the Touchstone Gallery at 901 New York Avenue NW at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 14. In his memory, the family welcomes donations to Touchstone Foundation for the Arts and Central Scholarship: The Gertrude & Arthur Lang Scholarship Fund.