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
Duane Michals quotes about
photography grief emotion
A photograph of a woman crying tells me nothing about grief. Or a photograph of a woman ecstatic tells me nothing about ecstasy. What is the nature of these emotions? The problem with photography is that it only deals with appearances.
thinking people magic
I 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.
photography forever trying
Photographers tend not to photograph what they can’t see, which is the very reason one should try to attempt it. Otherwise we’re going to go on forever just photographing more faces and more rooms and more places. Photography has to transcend description. It has to go beyond description to bring insight into the subject, or reveal the subject, not as it looks, but how does it feel?
art trying needs
Don’t try to be an artist. Find the thing within you that needs to be expressed. You might find it is art.
mind magic addresses
All good work has magic in it, and addresses the mind in a subtle way.
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.