Duane Michals
Duane Michals
Duane Michalsis an American photographer. Michals's work makes innovative use of photo-sequences, often incorporating text to examine emotion and philosophy...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhotographer
Date of Birth18 February 1932
CountryUnited States of America
photography school grace
I never went to a photography school, which was my saving grace,
garden august play
Then all at once in late August's heat, tall leafless stalks crowned with iridescent pink and purple blossoms burst from the purgatory in the earth. This arcane act of nature, though perceived by us as ordinary, is a manifestation of Maya's phantom play, the great immensity expressed in every way. My garden is the universe. I am the universe. I am my garden. All things are the same.
photograph
Taking the photograph is the easiest part for me
photography witty memories
If I indulge myself and surrender to memory, I can still feel the knot of excitement that gripped me as I turned the corner into Rue Mimosas, looking for the house of Rene Magritte. It was August, 1965. I was 33 years old and about to meet the man whose profound and witty surrealist paintings had contradicted my assumptions about photography.
photography writing bird
I got a lot of flak originally for writing with photographs, because the great cliche in photography is that one photograph is worth a thousand words, and photographers are usually dodo birds anyway.
flower eye glasses
Flowers construct the most charming geometries: circles like the sun, ovals, cones, curlicues and a variety of triangular eccentricities, which when viewed with the eye of a magnifying glass seem a Lilliputian frieze of psychedelic silhouettes.
needs term mediums
And in not learning the rules, I was free. I always say, you're either defined by the medium or you redefine the medium in terms of your needs.
sunset looks photograph
I never photograph sunsets and I never photograph moonrises. I'm not interested in what things look like.
mind magic addresses
All good work has magic in it, and addresses the mind in a subtle way.
thinking people challenges
I still find doing portraits a terrific challenge, but even though I've done hundreds of them, I've never stopped questioning the very nature of portraiture because it deals exclusively with appearances. I've never believed people are what they look like and think it's impossible to really know what people are.
photography thinking photographer
I think photographers are too polite. There is not enough anger in photography; it's pretty much trivialized.
photograph description insight
Most photographs, to me, are description, but they lack insight.
use painting boring
Usually when painters use photographs, they enlarge and copy them and simply make a large, boring painting of a large, boring photograph.
thinking expression wind
You can never capture a person in picture, never. You might get an interesting expression or gesture. I almost never research a picture subject ahead of time. I think Karsh is full of baloney. Can you imagine spending a whole week out in La Jolla with Jonas Salk soaking up his ambiance, then wind up making him look as if he's in the studio in Ottawa with his thumb under his chin?