Duane Michals conceives photography as a narrative and, with a great deal of inspiration and originality, creates series of images with a surreal, powerful aesthetic; the inclusion of text elements enables the American photographic artist to create a completely new, narrative perspective that takes the viewer on a journey to distant planes and insights.
(...) Continue readingA holiday trip sparked Duane Michals' interest in photography
Duane Michals was born on 18 February 1932 in McKeesport, Pennsylvania where he spent his childhood and youth before earning his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Denver in 1953. In order to realise his career aspirations as a graphic designer, he attended the Parsons School of Design immediately after his military service in 1956, but dropped out early. A holiday in what was then the Soviet Union in 1958 awakened his interest in photography; during his trip, he took a large number of photographs, mainly portraits, which Michals amalgamated for an exhibition at the U-Gallery in New York City in 1963. The decision in favour of photography paid off; Duane Michals quickly achieved his first successes as a fashion and advertising photographer, work which gave him the economic security he needed to practice photography as an art without regard for existing conventions and by consciously accepting a certain amount of risk. His clients at that time included such illustrious magazines as Esquire and Mademoiselle, as well as the renowned New York Times.
Narrative sequences without colours and artificial light
Duane Michals received initial support for his career as a photographer from his friend, the artist Daniel Entin, who let him use his own studio free of charge. Michals initially remained faithful to portraits using friends and acquaintances as models, whom he always captured in black and white and without any artificial lighting. His growing success and work for the media brought him into contact with prominent models, and in the 1960s he portrayed greats such as Andy Warhol, Tennessee Williams and René Magritte. As he did not have his own studio, he often photographed his models in their natural surroundings and thus created his own portrait style, which stood out from the working methods of his contemporary colleagues and gave him a personal touch. While his portraits were mainly commissioned works, from 1966 he began to create entire series of pictures with a narrative character, for which Duane Michals soon became widely famous. For these ‘Sequences’, the artist also chose himself as a motif; his visual language was sometimes poetic, sometimes humorous, but always characterised by a clear line.
Text elements became the special signature of Duane Michals
In the 1970s, Duane Michals took a further significant step and began to add various text elements to his picture series. These could be short poems, simple handwritten lines of text or entire stories. In this unique way, Michals told stories about such essential themes as dying and death, religion, family, childhood, sexuality and longing. Duane Michals also made a name for himself in the music scene: in 1983, he designed the cover for the English new wave band The Police for their last album, Synchroncity, and ten years later, designed the cover of Clouds over Eden for the American rock musician Richard Barone.
Duane Michals - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
