Duane Michals

“Either one is defined by the medium or one redefines it according to one's needs.”

During my research for the "Narrative/Sequences" project, I came across the work of Duane Michals and it immediately caught my attention. The first book I picked up was Foto Follies. How Photography Lost Its Virginity on the Way to the Bank, and it struck me in the way that slightly absurd things usually do and that spurred me on to read a little more about Michals and his work. In an interview published in BOMB magazine, Michals discusses the motivation behind his work as an expression of his anger and that it was essential for him not to repress those feelings. He seems to have an interesting philosophy for a photographer in which his interest lies primarily in what is unseen as opposed to objects that exist in the physical world, and he utilizes photography to turn those questions in his mind into visual representations. “What I expect from art is a point of discussion” (Seidner). Michals makes a point about constantly changing one's focus on an object and seeing things beyond their visual representations. He stressed the danger of photography coming to a standstill—one concern still relevant today.

Sources:

Bailey, Ronald H. The Photographic Illusion, Duane Michals. [New York]: Crowell, 1975. Print.

Seidner, David. "Duane Michals." BOMB Summer 1987: 24-29. JSTOR. Web. 19 Oct. 2012.

Michals, Duane. Foto Follies: How Photography Lost Its Virginity on the Way to the Bank. Göttingen: Steidl, 2006. Print.