Duane Michals
As suggested by the Tutor, I made a research on Duane Michals and focussed on his self-portraiture works.
Nevertheless, I could not skip those striking series of portraits he made all along his career.
I was fascinated and inspired by so many images, and I felt immediately comfortable, first of all with the black & white use, then with subjects and the way Michals suddenly gets, for each shot, the viewer's interest.
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| Duane Michals, from http://www.dcmooregallery.com/exhibitions/duane-michals-the-portraitist?view=slider#10 (accessed 10/09/2018) |
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| Duane Michals, from http://www.dcmooregallery.com/exhibitions/duane-michals-the-portraitist?view=slider#7 (accessed 10/09/2018) |
Then I went deeper in the web, looking for interviews and trying to understand Michals' way of thinking and I selected some statements. The first is in Italian, so I translated it:
'Quando guardi le mie fotografie, stai guardando i miei pensieri' (Duane Michals, from
https://www.internazionale.it/foto/2018/05/04/duane-michals-mostra-torino , accessed on 10/09/2018). Translation: 'When you look at my photographs, you are looking at my thoughts'
"I operate out of my own curiosity. You've got two choices, doing or bullshit. Most people bullshit"
..........
"If I had gone to photography school I would have learned the rules, and unlearning is the worst thing."
(Duane Michals, from https://vimeo.com/80728632 , accessed on 10/09/2018)
Very clear, very impressive, very provocative.
But this is the philosophy of Duane Michals, underpinning most of his work starting from early 60's (he began to shoot in 1958, during a trip to Soviet Union): experimenting, breaking rules and paradigms, being arrogant and doing self-parody at the same time.
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| Duane Michals, from https://theartstack.com/artist/duane-michals/self-portrait-devil-1 (accessed 10/09/2018) |
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| Duane Michals, from https://thegenealogyofstyle.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/photographing-the-package/ (accessed 10/09/2018) |
I view arrogance and self parody in the mix between shots and titles-texts that denotes each self portrait.
Even if his photographic philosophy is off to be mine, nevertheless I am seduced by Michals' self portraits. I was deeply inspired and I believe that I will try to experiment some of his ideas.
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| Duane Michals, from https://www.artnet.com/auctions/artists/duane-michals/self-portrait-with-my-guardian-angel (accessed 10/09/2018) |
As Duane Michals states in the interview @ https://vimeo.com/80728632 (accessed 10/09/2018) from a certain moment on his reality started to go beyond observation. He is not interested to photographic reality, he looks for the "unseen" and he thinks that the photographer should '.....transcend appearances ...".
For this reasons he does not believe in still photos, in classic single-image-portraits, the statement talking about "A picture is worth a thousand words". He wants to find his own voice, make his own rules, go under and beyond surface, expand his language through explanatory text and sequences.
At a certain stage of his professional life he felt that his research of the complete narrative was obstructed by the limit of the photographic medium and ended up in being frustrated by this boundaries (he refers to paradigms promoted by Ansel Adams or Robert Frank, for instance). Then he found back his narrative in the so-called "sequences":
What I see is a sequence of self portraits, put together in order to build a maybe obvious narrative, like 'I build a pyramid". However the meaning and the goal of this effort, are, as stated by the main title, to go beyond 'the decisive moment' (Henry Cartier Bresson) and experiment a completely new narrative, pushing the photographic medium out of its main function, that is to "freeze time".
Then I ask to myself if this technic could be closer to another medium, like cinematography.
This situation makes me remember when I researched Gregory Crewdson's works, then I compared them with Michals' self-portraiture sequences.
Crewdson prepares a complete, almost perfect stage, by a lot of efforts, means, characters, in order to take only one shot. This shot will tell the whole story. The preparation and means could remember a cinematographic technic, but the shot is one and there is no sequence.
Duane Michals uses a cinematographic technic as well: not in the stage preparation, but in making a sequence.
For this reasons he does not believe in still photos, in classic single-image-portraits, the statement talking about "A picture is worth a thousand words". He wants to find his own voice, make his own rules, go under and beyond surface, expand his language through explanatory text and sequences.
At a certain stage of his professional life he felt that his research of the complete narrative was obstructed by the limit of the photographic medium and ended up in being frustrated by this boundaries (he refers to paradigms promoted by Ansel Adams or Robert Frank, for instance). Then he found back his narrative in the so-called "sequences":
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| Duane Michals, from https://www.myajc.com/entertainment/arts--theater/duane-michals-goes-beyond-the-decisive-moment-his-photos/lOQ0DfH7pppLPCQeT6tBQP/ (accessed 10/09/2018) |
Then I ask to myself if this technic could be closer to another medium, like cinematography.
This situation makes me remember when I researched Gregory Crewdson's works, then I compared them with Michals' self-portraiture sequences.
Crewdson prepares a complete, almost perfect stage, by a lot of efforts, means, characters, in order to take only one shot. This shot will tell the whole story. The preparation and means could remember a cinematographic technic, but the shot is one and there is no sequence.
Duane Michals uses a cinematographic technic as well: not in the stage preparation, but in making a sequence.
A stunning example is "The spirit leaves the body, a six overexposed pictures sequence, that can be seen at minute 1:54 of the video
https://vimeo.com/80728632 (accessed 10/09/2018)
Researching, reading and listening to interview by Duane Michals I gradually realized why the Tutor advised to look at his work: all this made me go back to the rework of my Assignment 3, where I rearranged the sequence in order to give a richer narrative to the outcome.
