Before the Internet, I discovered great photographers and photographs among the pages of books at the Boston University library. I was supposed to be studying for an algebra test but found myself flipping through pages of monographs by the best photographers of the 60s, 70s and 80s.
One of these was Duane Michals who become a favorite of mine. For some reason, I always thought of him as being French but he grew up in Pittsburg where his father worked at one of “Mr. Carnegie‘s steel mills”.
In one series of photographs, he returns to his boyhood home, now abandoned, and marries photographs of his family from the past with decaying house and town of today.
Michals moved to NYC and worked as a commercial photographer for magazines such as Esquire and Mademoiselle. Michals is known for his innovative use of photo-sequences, often incorporating text to examine emotion and philosophy
Michals produced the art for the album Synchronicity (by The Police) in 1983
He is noted for two innovations in artistic photography developed in the 1960s and 1970s. First, he “[told] a story through a series of photos” as in his 1970 book Sequences. Second, he handwrote text near his photographs, thereby giving information that the image itself could not convey.
In many ways, Michals was a filmmaker in spirit using still photography and text as a short-hand method of storytelling.
His wonderful little musings about life, often in rhyme, with staged photographs, are intriguing and captured his unique view of the world.
I think what I love most about Duane Michals is his livelong experimentation and play with imagery and words. Along with the sequences, he also played with double exposure and reflections throughout his career, exploring the idea of seeing beyond what is expected from photography.
The documentary “Duane Michals: The Man Who Invented Himself” available on Kanopy, does a great job capturing the playful nature of the artist. In the film, Michals is reaching 80 years old, but is as playful as a boy.
[…] Duane Michals | The Man Who Invented Himself […]