Duane Michals Quotes

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Duane Michals

Profession : Photographer

Birth : February 18, 1932

Trust that little voice in your head that says 'Wouldn't it be interesting if...'; And then do it.

Duane Michals

I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see.

Duane Michals

Even in the deepest love relationship - when lovers say 'I love you' to each other - we don't really know what we're saying, because language isn't equal to the complexity of human emotions.

Duane Michals

My work is about my life as an event, and I find myself to be very temporal, transient.

Duane Michals

Photographers usually want to photograph facts and things. But I'm interested in the nature of the thing itself. A photograph of someone sleeping tells me nothing about their dream state; a photograph of a corpse tells me nothing about the nature of death. My work is about my life as an event, and I find myself to be very temporal, transient.

Duane Michals

I've done a lot of commercial work. I'm the complete photographer.

Duane Michals

I think photographers are too polite. There is not enough anger in photography; it's pretty much trivialized.

Duane Michals

I think photographs should be provocative and not tell you what you already know. It takes no great powers or magic to reproduce somebody's face in a photograph. The magic is in seeing people in new ways.

Duane Michals

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

Duane Michals

To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.

Duane Michals

The majority of photographers focus on the obvious. They believe and accept what their eyes tell them, and yet eyes know nothing.

Duane Michals

To fulfil a fantasy is the quickest way to destroy it.

Duane Michals

I write in order to express what the photo itself cannot say. A photograph of my father doesn't tell me what I thought of him, which for me is much more important than what the man looked like.

Duane Michals

I'm a terrible punster. And I love to rhyme. I just can't help myself.

Duane Michals

Art has to address eternal issues.

Duane Michals

I'm very hard on the art world just being a big business.

Duane Michals

The question of truth is forever in the air, and people look for it with particular fervor in art.

Duane Michals

Photography does deal with 'truth' or a kind of superficial reality better than any of the other arts, but it never questions the nature of reality - it simply reproduces reality. And what good is that when the things of real value in life are invisible?

Duane Michals

I still find doing portraits a terrific challenge, but even though I've done hundreds of them, I've never stopped questioning the very nature of portraiture because it deals exclusively with appearances. I've never believed people are what they look like and think it's impossible to really know what people are.

Duane Michals

Most photographs, to me, are description, but they lack insight.

Duane Michals