Duane Michals, Photographer

Beyond Believing:Insight and Imagination

Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be. --- Duane Michals

How 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

The Spirit Leaves the Body

The Spirit Leaves the Body each image approx. 3 1/4 x 5 in. (8.3 x 12.7 cm) on sheets 4 15/16 x 7 in. (12.6 x 17.8 cm) . Seven gelatin silver prints. Cincinnati Art Museum.

Joseph Cornell 1972

Who Am I?1995

Primavera (Springtime)

When the Poet . . .

When the old poet saw the ghost of his dead son, 8/6/06c-print with hand applied text mounted to board, 11 x 14 inches.

Fireflies Reflected in Water . . . 2005

Fireflies reflected in water look like stars swimming across the pond C-print with hand-applied text. 2005.

Self-Portrait As If I Were Dead(1970)

Self-Portrait As If I Were Dead, 1968, printed laterPhotograph, Gelatin-silver print, Unframed: 5 x 7 7/16 in. (12.7 x 18.89 cm)The Audrey and Sydney Irmas Collection (AC1992.197.92)Photography Department, LACMA.

Warren Beatty(1961)

Alice's Mirror1974, Sequence of 7 photographs