Duane Michals
Photographer
1932-02-18
Quotes by Duane Michals
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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.
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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.
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In the West, people tend to look at life as spectators, but in the East, people are the thing.
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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.
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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.
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My work is about my life as an event, and I find myself to be very temporal, transient.
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