Duane Michals
9 quotes
Biography
Duane Stephen Michals was an American photographer whose work, full of narrative at a time when the photography world was not focused on it, often showed the influence of surrealism. Michals made innovative use of photo-sequences and often incorporated handwritten text to examine emotion and philosophy.
"The question of truth is forever in the air, and people look for it with particular fervor in art."
"Trust that little voice in your head that says 'Wouldn't it be interesting if...' And then do it."
"I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see."
"Trust that little voice in your head that says 'Wouldn't it be interesting if...' And then do it."
"Photography is essentially an act of recognition by street photographers, not an act of invention. Photographers might respond to an old man’s face, or an Arbus freak, or the way light hits a building—and then they move on. Whereas in all the other art forms, take William Blake, everything that came to that paper never existed before. It’s the idea of alchemy, of making something from nothing."
"Even in the deepest love relationship - when lovers say 'I love you' to each other - we don't really know what we're saying, because language isn't equal to the complexity of human emotions."
"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."
"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?"
"I think photographers are too polite. There is not enough anger in photography it's pretty much trivialized."