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
believe imagination vision
I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see.
art whispering shouting
Art is really whispering, not shouting.
people looks west
In the West, people tend to look at life as spectators, but in the East, people are the thing.
confused believe reflection
How foolish of me to believe that it would be that easy. I had confused the appearance of trees and automobiles, and people with a reality itself, and believed that a photograph of these appearances to be a photograph of it. It is a melancholy truth that I will never be able to photograph it and can only fail. I am a reflection photographing other reflections within a reflection. To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.
events transient
My work is about my life as an event, and I find myself to be very temporal, transient.
reading white waiting
It is no accident that you are reading this. I am making black marks on white paper. These marks are my thoughts, and although I do not know who you are reading this...the lines of our lives have intersected. For the length of these few sentences, we meet here. It is no accident that you are reading this. This moment has been waiting for you, I have been waiting for you. Remember me.
trust ignorance ifs-and
Trust that little voice in your head that says 'Wouldn't it be interesting if...'; And then do it.
consider fantasies trust
The only thing I know anything about are my own fantasies and anxieties. I don't trust my eyes. I consider myself to be a short-story writer.
address good issues
All good children's books, I think, address metaphysical issues in some kind of way.
A lot of photographers walk around looking for something 'out there,' but I'm very much interested in what's 'in here.'
fear photograph
You can't see fear or lust; you can't photograph someone's anxieties, how disappointment feels. Photographs are approximations.
became bought early maybe museum nobody people rewards
People of my generation who became photographers in the late fifties, early sixties, there were no rewards in photography. There were no museum shows. Maybe MOMA would show something, or Chicago. There were no galleries. Nobody bought photographs.
corpse dream facts interested life nature photograph sleeping tells work
Photographers usually want to photograph facts and things. But I'm interested in the nature of the thing itself. A photograph of someone sleeping tells me nothing about their dream state; a photograph of a corpse tells me nothing about the nature of death. My work is about my life as an event, and I find myself to be very temporal, transient.
face great magic people powers reproduce seeing takes
Think photographs should be provocative and not tell you what you already know. It takes no great powers or magic to reproduce somebody's face in a photograph. The magic is in seeing people in new ways.