My work is about my life as an event, and I find myself to be very temporal, transient.
Duane MichalsMost portraits are lies. People are rarely what they appear to be, especially in front of a camera. You might know me your entire lifetime and never reveal yourself to me. To interpret wrinkles as character is insult not insight.
Duane MichalsPhotography is essentially an act of recognition by street photographers, not an act of invention. Photographers might respond to an old manโs face, or an Arbus freak, or the way light hits a buildingโand then they move on. Whereas in all the other art forms, take William Blake, everything that came to that paper never existed before. Itโs the idea of alchemy, of making something from nothing.
Duane MichalsHow foolish of me to believe that it would be that easy. I had confused the appearance of trees and automobiles, and people with a reality itself, and believed that a photograph of these appearances to be a photograph of it. It is a melancholy truth that I will never be able to photograph it and can only fail. I am a reflection photographing other reflections within a reflection. To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.
Duane Michals