Duane Talks and Compilations for a You tube Video
Duane Michals Best Creative Photography Advice (compilation)
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and then I began to tell stories and
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expand the decisive moment – one two
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three four five moments and then I began
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to write on photographs which gave me I
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couldn’t put something in a picture that
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wasn’t there in the first place and then
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I began to do things which I call
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deconstructed pictures where I take a
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picture apart and put it back together
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so it the more I liberate myself to
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express myself the more i liberate
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myself to fail failure is very important
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I’m an expressionist it’s how well do i
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express myself so if I express myself
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with a camera or paint it’s all about
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the idea
like to make it to 90 I don’t know but
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so that that was a long shadow so all my
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spiritual speculation and meditation and
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reading in Buddhism and and doing them
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you know a lot of the works been about
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the nature of death my self-portrait
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with my guardian angel photograph myself
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as if I were dead spirit leaves the body
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Death Comes the old man you know I never
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solved the problem
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years later aren’t so ideal I began to
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move away from the still image out of
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the frustration with the still image you
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know I look I took a picture of you and
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I would show somebody the picture nice
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well that’s a nice-looking guy yeah but
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what what do I know about you from the
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picture nothing
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not that person one of the things make
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art art they’re desirable is its
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uniqueness and its
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inaccessibility and it’s originally in
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its touch and all these things are in
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photography are completely wiped out by
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iPhones it’s that all that’s going and
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not only is it going it’s going because
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people don’t care about photography they
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don’t care about the perfect print that
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group will become smaller and smaller of
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connoisseurs it’s already phasing out
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it’s being destroyed by its own success
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seem to be what I am experiencing that
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was interesting
you know you have to provoke people into
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you have to demand that they get deeper
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and deeper
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mesmerize and defined by mere
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observation I said when you bring
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insight into the observations when you
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become the artist to say oh this is
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picture of my grandma okay an old lady
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so what but if you were this efficient
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buying grandmother and her my
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grandfather was abusive and she was
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probably the saddest woman I’ve ever
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known
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Wow now we’re talking up to them it’s
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description but when i annotate I that’s
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an invitation that makes the difference
mesmerize
/ˈmɛzmərʌɪz/
verb
- 1.capture the complete attention of (someone); transfix:”they were mesmerized by his story”
mere
/mɪə/
adjective
- 1.used to emphasize how small or insignificant someone or something is:”questions that cannot be answered by mere mortals”synonymstrifling, meagre, bare, trivial, paltry, … more
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- how did that evolve what essentially
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- came out of need for something to be
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- expressed and I realized that things
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- that interested me weren’t things that I
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- would find on the street and I would
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- have to go out and make them happen
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- myself I was never a reportage person
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wonderful accident so it became it came
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out of the need to talk about things
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that really disturbed me and the thing
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that disturbed me were things that I
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consider very important like what
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happens when you die and what happened
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to yesterday and all those silly things
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that kids asked that we had grown up
if you look at a photograph of somebody
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crying you register grief but in fact
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you don’t know what those people are
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experiencing at all
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you’re always projecting on the world
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your version of what that emotion is so
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the what is known is only what I know
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the only truth I know is my own
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experience I don’t know what it means to
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be black I don’t know what it means to
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be a woman I don’t know what it means to
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be kardi a person so I have to define my
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work in terms of my own truth and that’s
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what the journey is all about if you are
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true to your own instincts and the great
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the great wonder is that each one of us
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you know has its own we have our own
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validity we have our own mysteries and
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it’s the sharing of those gifts that
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makes artists artists America
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it’s very seldom dealt with the interior
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landscape social landscape is a very big
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number in the 50s or I guess 60 da to
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remember anymore but
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my kind of photography has really been
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somewhat of a a wolf and hen house in
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the sense that it’s been in America
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it but my truth the interior truth
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ultimately is the only truth when you
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are developing a work can you tell us
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whether the words the plot or the image
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comes first in your mind actually it’s
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the chicken or the egg no it really
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depends on the notion most of all I pay
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attention to my mind
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we all have minds and most people don’t
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pay attention to their mind we’re all so
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distracted
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mean the whole culture is designed to
distract you and maybe that’s why I’m
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attracted Eastern religions because it
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really deals with the more of an
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interior dialogue so I really work
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totally out of out of my mind and my
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imagination
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professional photographer in a
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dilettante mystic and I would much
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prefer to be a professional mystic
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questions and I think photographs should
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not give you answer that I think
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photographs should ask questions
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photographs should not tell me what I
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already know photograph should
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contradict me
you see people believe
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photographs too they don’t believe
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paintings which gives up a photographer
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an enormous weapon because he can it’s a
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wonderful vehicle to contradict people’s
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assumptions because if you do something
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in a photograph that doesn’t happen in
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real life the fact that the photograph
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is very disturbing so I was always
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jealous of painters because they could
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really make people Magritte could have
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people raining out of the sky and I
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simply couldn’t do that and so I
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realized that if I could paint and maybe
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I could have another another thing I
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could do and so that’s what’s happening
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I’m teaching myself how to paint after
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30 years and I find it scary as hell a
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little wonderful
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photographer should use everything that
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the camera can do and certainly one of
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them is blurring and double exposing I
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find it’s very useful because people in
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real life do not blur or double expose
think of the kind of
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wonderful things he would create
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photography they only feel all the other
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art forms are based on the imagination
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I think it’s very important always to be
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living on the edge where it’s always
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possible when you’re not quite sure what
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this is about that’s the excitement all
one of your central
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concerns is the whole notion of human
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awareness
in some way that we could
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understand that being alive is simply
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not a matter of consuming things using
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and using deodorants it really is a
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matter of being a walking talking
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once-in-a-lifetime offer in the universe
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it’s never going to appear again
maybe I use the photography
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somehow to explain to myself to remind
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me that I’m alive
if you
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photograph something that shows you what
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it looks like but I want to know what it
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feels l
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called things are queer
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you see I used to think of time as being
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horizontal and if I look straight ahead
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I could make out the outlines at this
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coming weekend and if I look behind me I
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could make out the outlines of last
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weekend but now I can hardly make out
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the outlines of yesterday morning or
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tomorrow morning but it’s guess when I
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was born remember I said there’s no now
our lives had been just one now
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one only one moment called now which as
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a sequence we have stretched into this
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because of the nature of the rules of
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this particular universe we have
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stretched into befores and afters but if
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you examine it there’s never been
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anything else but now and that’s all
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there is
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all things mellow in the mine a sleight
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of hand the trick of time and even our
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great love will fade soon we’ll be
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strangers in the grave that’s why this
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moment is so dear I kiss your lips and
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we are here so let’s let’s hold tight
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and touch and feel for this quick
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instant we are real
my father could walk on the sky in
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the sky he promised to teach me how but
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he left without saying goodbye I don’t
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cry I’m a grown-up now
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all the writing and all of the sequences
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and everything I’ve ever done has come
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out of with frustration with the
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stillness of the steel camera you know
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being boxed in by the camera so somehow
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I had to circumvent the stillness and
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because I wasn’t wedded to the purity of
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the camera I just began to write
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we live in our emotions the visual part
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of us is a small piece of this enormous
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pie called reality and photographers
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kept limiting themselves to that little
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portion of the pie and I said now we
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have to expand the definition of reality
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to include the whole experience
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we spend a third of our lives dreaming
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what’s more real to than your own dreams
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and when you’re dreaming them you
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believe they are real why aren’t dreams
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a subject for photography it’s because
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photographers only photograph what they
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can see so then I had to invent other
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ways using photography like double
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exposures sequences little mini stories
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like haiku anything you know sandwich
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negatives blurs anything that destroyed
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the nature of reality
people believe reality
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they believe photographs have gives you
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us a gives you a weapon to play with our
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perceptions
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first one to write with photographs
I call myself an
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expressionist it’s not about writing
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it’s not about photography it’s not
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about tap dancing or painting as well
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how well do you express yourself in
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terms of your needs so that means I’m
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not wedded to the camera I’m not wedded
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to writing I’m not wedded to any of
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these things
Photographer Duane Michals Talks About His Career Apr 15, 2013
Eric paddock I’m the
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curator of photography here at the
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Denver Art Museum
On Twains work
I learned from those pictures
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is that there are many different ways to
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make photographs and photographs create
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narratives or tell stories in a lot of
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different ways and there’s no single
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right or wrong way to do that they’re
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all potentially as fascinating
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in the 19th century photographers such
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as William Lake Price and Julia Margaret
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Cameron and later in the century at
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Frank Holland day constructed
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photographs that Illustrated or told
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stories the difference there is that
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often those pictures were pictures that
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referred to works of literature things
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Duane did as he came along and he
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disarticulated that whole idea
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of a very restrictive and
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straightforward kind of photographic
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narrative and introduced us to something
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very new and very different
Gary Trudeau and David
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Leventhal book Hitler moves east from
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the 1970s a lot of the work of Eileen
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Cowen Leslie Crim’s even Cindy Sherman
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have some important and interesting
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relationship to Dwayne’s work
this is a plant
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life that’s a plant dead what’s gone the
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energy is gone the Chinese call it the
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Chi the Japanese call it the key it Ali
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Bergson the French philosopher called
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that Elan V tau and I call it the
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animating energy it is the energy that
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is everything that you’re seeing it’s
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the energy in every plant
I’m an empiricist
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I believe in direct experiences you only
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true knowledge you know it’s like
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reading a hundred love stories then you
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find that you finally fall in love
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just saying at any age you can always
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get your act in gear that Stephen
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Sondheim gypsy wrote a couple of
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interesting lyrics which I always
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remembered and he talked about some
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people can become usik is free some
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people can be content playing being
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going paying rent and they said living
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life in the living room so I’m saying is
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we’re going to be out of here before you
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can say my god what was that
I have a very big curiosity
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and I always want to know what’s going
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on and and the other thing about
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photographs is photography photographs
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duplicates reality with exquisite
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fidelity as nothing else can do it
I found that I you have to
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annotate the photograph so because when
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I told my mother that I was going to be
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a photographer she said what you never
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you never went to photography school but
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if I had gone nothing personal it would
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have been a disaster because I would
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have learned the photography rules and
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it’s very difficult to unlearn
if you don’t believe in the
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possibility of something it’ll never
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happen
if you’re a
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creative person you cannot be creative
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without taking risks
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no American has the right to impose his
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private morality on any other American
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which is precisely the agenda most
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organized religions and that’s the
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bottom line nobody has the right
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began to write with photographs cause I
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was frustrated with the silence of still
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photography
Hokusai
JAPANESE ARTIST
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hokusai
called Japanese Seema
Ukiyo-e
JAPANESE ART
https://www.britannica.com/art/ukiyo-e
Tibetan Book of
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the Dead
Giorgio de Chirico
Baltus and Magritte
ShelleyCsBlog 