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The Essential Duane Michals
Bound in publisher's original black cloth with spine stamped in silver.
- GenresArtPhotography
224 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 29, 2022
Duane Michals is one of my favorite photographers. He's a storyteller who happens to be a beautiful photographer. What's interesting about him is his propensity to narrative. Early in his career, he started pushing against the limitations of the single image by presenting sequences of images that together tell us so much more than a single photo.
For a while the photography community was outraged at his apostasy, denying their faith in the absolute expressiveness of the single image. But Duane Michaels likes story. He also frequently accompanies his photographs with text, sometimes whole poems--doubly enraging the purists, who insist on the supremacy of the image over the word.
What I like about him is the intense tenderness of his work. At a time when many artists pride themselves on toughness, you feel the fragility and beauty and playfulness of life in Duane Michal's work. He feels a lot like a photographic Tennessee Williams that way.
In Alice's Mirror, one of my favorites, he plays with scale. You go into a mirror, in which there's another mirror, and in that, another, until these worlds are held in a tiny mirror in the palm of a hand--which crushes it. In 'Fallen Angel' an angel comes through a window, encountering a nude man on a bed... several frames show the metamorphosis of the angel into a troubled clothed man who leaves in the last shot. In 'The Human Condition' a man on a subway platform is subsumed in light which becomes, in the last two shots, the galaxy.
The erotic gaze is a major component of Michal's work--not a commanding gaze, not a demanding one, but a hungry, beauty-loving one. The slightest glance in the street takes a series, the distant figure, closer, the look away, the other following with his eyes... a signal to which gay men have always been extremely sensitive. A man just toweling his back, lingering over six photographs.
The text in this book is particularly good, grouping and discussing the photographs in terms of theme.
topics like Mortality, Human Dependency, God, Self-Image. I know there's a new book on Duane Michal's Portraits, there's a nice assortment of them here--Michals isn't one of those portrait photographers who is able to reach down and reveal who people really are, he depends on the playfulness of the sitter and their ability to assemble a persona for the camera--people like Rene Magritte and Marcel Duchamp. Inspiring.
For a while the photography community was outraged at his apostasy, denying their faith in the absolute expressiveness of the single image. But Duane Michaels likes story. He also frequently accompanies his photographs with text, sometimes whole poems--doubly enraging the purists, who insist on the supremacy of the image over the word.
What I like about him is the intense tenderness of his work. At a time when many artists pride themselves on toughness, you feel the fragility and beauty and playfulness of life in Duane Michal's work. He feels a lot like a photographic Tennessee Williams that way.
In Alice's Mirror, one of my favorites, he plays with scale. You go into a mirror, in which there's another mirror, and in that, another, until these worlds are held in a tiny mirror in the palm of a hand--which crushes it. In 'Fallen Angel' an angel comes through a window, encountering a nude man on a bed... several frames show the metamorphosis of the angel into a troubled clothed man who leaves in the last shot. In 'The Human Condition' a man on a subway platform is subsumed in light which becomes, in the last two shots, the galaxy.
The erotic gaze is a major component of Michal's work--not a commanding gaze, not a demanding one, but a hungry, beauty-loving one. The slightest glance in the street takes a series, the distant figure, closer, the look away, the other following with his eyes... a signal to which gay men have always been extremely sensitive. A man just toweling his back, lingering over six photographs.
The text in this book is particularly good, grouping and discussing the photographs in terms of theme.
topics like Mortality, Human Dependency, God, Self-Image. I know there's a new book on Duane Michal's Portraits, there's a nice assortment of them here--Michals isn't one of those portrait photographers who is able to reach down and reveal who people really are, he depends on the playfulness of the sitter and their ability to assemble a persona for the camera--people like Rene Magritte and Marcel Duchamp. Inspiring.
July 1, 2022
He’s so great
September 22, 2009
I first got acquainted with Michals' work in first year (now I'm in third year) and it spoke profoundly to me then, but this year it's even more evocative to me; I suppose because I'm older and I'm reaching the end of my formal design education (we're always learning though).
Michals deals with the subjects our repressed selves would rather not think twice about—whether it's about our sexuality, our mortality, our fears, our spirituality or our capacity for violence, Michals taps into our psyche and plays with it.
Michals deals with the subjects our repressed selves would rather not think twice about—whether it's about our sexuality, our mortality, our fears, our spirituality or our capacity for violence, Michals taps into our psyche and plays with it.
February 1, 2008
Genius.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews