Duane Michals

PANTHEON PHOTO LIBRARY

DUANE MICHALS

Duane Michals
Introduction

by Renaud Camus

PANTHEON BOOKS, NEW YORK

CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE, PARIS

English translation copyright

(&

1986

by

Centre National de la Photographie

under International and Pan-American

Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by
Pantheon Books, a division ot Random House, Inc., New York,
and simultaneously in Canada by Random House ot Canada
Limited, Toronto. Originally published in France by the Centre
National de la Photographie. Copyright 1983 by Centre
National de la Photographie, Paris.
All rights reserved

On

the cover:

Andy Warhol,

1958.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Michals, Duane.

Duane

Michals.

Translation from the French

Photography, Artistic. 2. Michals, Duane
I. Centre National de la Photographie (France).
85-43444
1986 779'.092'4
n. Title. TR654.D82513
ISBN 0-394-74446-2 (pbk.)
1.

Manufactured

in

France /First American Edition

24689753

THE SHADOW OF A DOUBLE

for William

A large mirror, so at first

it

seemed to me

in

my conJusion,

now stood where none had been

Edgar Allan

perceptible before
Poe, "William Wilson"

Duane Michals was born on February 18, 1932, in

McKeesport, Pennsylvania. His parents were of Czech origin, like those of another Pennsylvanian, Andy Warhol.
Early on in their respective careers, Michals would photograph Warhol, producing a singularly striking portrait.
Wishing to Americanize the original family name Mihal,
had it changed to Michals. Mrs Michals was
employed in the home of a wealthy couple who had a son
named Duane. She must have liked the name very much, or
perhaps she was particularly fond of the little boy, for she
decided to name her own son Duane as well. As a boy,
Duane Michals was understandably intrigued by the boy
whose name he shared; however, the two would never be
given an opportunity to meet. Though probably highly
regarded by his namesake, the "original Duane" - as a
recent biography, not without a certain stinging cruelty,
called him - committed suicide during his sophomore year
his parents

of college.

The whole issue of the name Duane, and all it suggests

doubts regarding identity, a virtual rivalry for
his mother's love, unsatisfied curiosity, the ambiguity surrounding the death of someone who was more himself than
he was - and more legitimately so - may not entirely explain
but may well symbolize the majority of the basic themes
of frustration,

and

recurrent aspects found throughout Michals' work, his

and especially in his comments. There are his obsession

with duality {Rene Maghtte, 1965), and the usual accoutrements of mirrors and subtle reflections (Bill Brandt, 1974;
Francois Truffaut, 1981); his double career as an artistic and a
commercial photographer; time divided between doing the
life,

work necessary to provide for material comforts and that

done for personal pleasure, or between the city and the
country; a taste for such binary opposites as spirit and
matter, appearance and reality youth and old age, the artist

and the model, or life and death; things

Becoming Then, 1973); twins {Homage

split in

to

two (Now

Cavafy, 1978);

veiled threats of obliteration {Joseph Cornell, 1972); hidden

faces {Andy Warhol 1958); emptiness (the series on deserted
places, 1964-66); superimposed images; disappearances;
transparent presences; ghostly silhouettes; double exposures; and the omnipresence of death.

"How can

I be dead? the spirit asks himself, standing

a mirror in The Journey of the Spirit after Death.
Michals speaks repeatedly of "dissatisfaction" when explaining his decisions to combine photography with activities or other artistic expressions which had, until then, seemed
to be as distinctly different as possible. These innovations
are landmark dates in his evolution as an artist. In 1966 he
associated photography with narration, thus creating his
famous sequences and ensuring his reputation as a photographer. In 1974 he added written narratives; this new form

in front of

became as

typically his as the earlier sequences. Then, in

he incorporated photography's most renowned rival,

painting, in his work. He did this by painting directly on his
own prints or on classics by photographers such as CartierBresson, Kertesz or Ansel Adams. In the latter instance, he
1979,

add his own signature above that of the

One may interpret this gesture as a sign of his persis-

never hesitated to
other.

tent interrogation and anxiety with regard to identity. Further confirmation of this is found in his own statements
concerning the handwritten captions on his own photo-

my handwriting, but someone else can always make a new print!' Writing about
Michals, Michel Foucault quotes him on the same point:
"Seeing words on a page pleases me. It is like a trail I've left
behind me, uncertain, strange markings, a proof that I've
been there!' "Proof',' of course, has two meanings, referring
both to a photographic proof or to something that establishes truth. Among the most moving examples of Michals'
work is a 1974 photograph with text, significantly entitled
"This Photograph Is My Proof!' Yet, in a text without photographs, handwritten as always on photographic paper, he
graphs "No one can reproduce
:

said, "It is a melancholY Irulh that I... can onlY

reflection photographing other reflections within

am a
a reflection!'
fail. I

Consider the 1974 photograph entitled "Self-portrait

with

My Guardian Angel!' The right side of Michal's face is

shadow while, on the left side, the profile of his

"guardian angel',' who resembles him in manY wctys, seems
to be overexposed. The accompanYing text speaks of the
angel, Pete, who we're told died in 1931, just before Duane's
birth. It contains a suggestion of frustration and the splitting
in two of the double himself: "... He never became what he
could have been!' The name Duane has a definite affinitY to
dualitY Likewise, the familY names Mihal and Michals, for
which manY different, often verY vague, interpretations have
been expounded, are inevitablY traced to Michael the
Archangel. ManY Years ago, Michals created for himself an
imaginarY double, Stefan Mihal, who is the opposite of
everYlhing he is, the person he never became.
cast in

Michals was brought up

in the Catholic religion.

the possible origins for the sequences that are so
intimatelY associated with his image as an artist, he readilY
cites the different Stations of the Cross and the order in
which theY hung along the walls of the familYS home. The

Among

and metaphYsical aspects which preoccupY

him and which he emphasizes when speaking of his art are
discreetlY tinged with a more or less repressed religiositY

philosophic

This same element is clearlY manifested in his choice of

words, in his titles, e.g. soul, heaven, paradise, spirit. Prodigal
Son, Jesus Christ, grievous fault.

sequence The Fallen Angel, another angel - not

before - immediatelY loses his wings for
having tasted of the flesh. Michals believed he had found in
Constantino CavafYS work the literarY counterpart to his
In the

the

same one as

own photographic

work. But sexualitY and, in this case,

homosexualitY are far more serene and more triumphantlY

assumed, albeit nostalgicallY as concerns CavafY than theY
are for Michals. AnY guilt in this regard remains completelY
exterior to CavafY,' the memory of his Youthful ardors gives
wings to the poet in his old age.

One of the specific traits of the intellectual premises in

Michals' work is an obstinate mistrust - basicallY verY Chris-

tian, in fact - of

appearances, coupled with a rather naive

reaUty that these appearances hide. As

he has said: "It is important not to worry about appearances
but about what people are. What they represent in one's life
is the meaningful thing, not what they resemble today or
yesterday!' Note the exquisite ambiguity produced by
placing the verb represent in a position of near equivalence
with the preceding verb to be.
faith in the superior

In an extremely well-known sequence, Paradise Regained, a young couple in an apartment see themselves
progressively being stripped, or freed, of their cultural environment, beginning with their clothes. Furniture, knick-knacks,
art reproductions - all disappear one by one to be replaced
by a growing profusion of greenery. But the primitive Garden of Eden thus reconstituted and, no doubt, supposedly
natural, is represented by the most cultural of all these
objects, green plants. In the last picture, the clock on
the mantel can still be glimpsed among the leaves. This
particular paradise has not been freed of time, nor, therefore,

from History.

most frequently reproduced and comMichals' works, and one of those

which most arouse differing emotional responses in the
mind of the viewer, is "A Letter from My Father!' A complex
composition in all respects, the photograph itself was taken
in 1960, whereas the written commentary surrounding it was
Another

of the

mented upon

added

of

Duane

uses the first

Presumably, therefore,
especially as the text is handwritten, the narrator and the
author are one and the same. Hence the observer identifies
the narrator with the young man whose stubbornly set
profile is seen on the right of the photograph confronting the
face of the father, who is seen full front. Although the father is
not

person

in

until 1975. In the text, the narrator

speaking

of his father.

indeed Duane Michals'

father, the

young man

is

not the

photographer, but his brother, a psychiatrist.

Photography is, of course, the art of duplication par

excellence. However, the function of duplicating reality does
not satisfy Duane Michals, who insists that the important
thing is not the appearance of things, but rather their
philosophic nature. But what if their philosophic nature
were their appearance? Neither the artist nor the thinker in
Michals can completely escape this terrible suspicion.

Michals' work is almosl as aulobiographical as that of

Lartigue, for example. However, it differs radically in that
Michals does not surprise the moment he creates it. Unlike
Lartigue, who, in his youth, would station himself at a bend in
the paths of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, patiently waiting
to capture the apparition of elegant ladies in their best
finery, Michals is never on the lookout to catch a body in
motion. He provokes movement in order to put it on film so as
to produce a movement in the soul. To do this, he uses
models, whether professionals or not, complex technical
processes, and intelligent staging. He occupies a place of
honor in the ranks of those photographers, less numerous
than at the turn of the century, who are dedicated to what
A.D. Coleman called "the directorial mode!' It may be said
that, with him, one is as far away as possible from reporting,
that "universal reporting" for which he professes a total
poetic disdain.

A certain little boy wearing a cap, standing in a public

in Leningrad, seems to offer the viewer something
deja vu, in the tradition of Cartier-Bresson, if you will The
great square behind him, however, glistening with rain after
a storm, is nothing but reflections, throwing back images of
the few passersby, the street lamp, a small van; it is an
inverted response, trembling, precarious, threatened. One is
tempted to see in the photograph, in those shadowy silhouettes, a more specific presage of the art to come of the real
Michals. But there is no real Michals. He is always elsewhere, beyond the mirrors, critical reductions and closed
genres. He has been carried away by new inspiration from
any image of himself that would freeze him in cliches. A 1973
self-portrait is entitled "I
Another." Let us end here, with
the little boy among those reflections, and with those first
scenes and characters photographed in Russia in 1958,
which, to Michals' surprise, opened up and revealed to him
his true vocation. One who believes in signs, and the signs
made among signs, will delight in a small detail. These
photographs were taken by a young traveler with someone
else's camera, an Argus, which, before leaving New York, he
had, just in case, borrowed.

square

Am

Renaud Camus

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Marcel Duchamp.

1962.

Andy Warhol.

1958.

r
BIOGRAPHY

Duane Steven Michals

is born on
McKeesport,
Pennsylvania. His father, John Ambrose
Michals, is a metal worker; his mother,
Margaret Cecilia Matik, a cleaning
woman. He spends his first five years
with his grandparents because
his mother resides with her employers.

1932,

February

8,

in

Michals is awarded a scholarship

enabling him to register for the
Saturday watercolor classes held at the
Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh.
1946.

photographer Daniel Entin, he begins a

career in this field. His first
professional jobs are a series of
publicity photographs for the musical
fruitful

7^26 Fantasticks.

receives regular

1963. First exhibition, the

Gallery

Thanks to another scholarship and

earnings from spare jobs, he enrolls

He

assignments from such publications as

Show, Mademoiselle, Esquire, and later
from Vogue, The New York Times,
Horizon, and Scientific American,
as well as commissions from Revlon
and Elizabeth Arden.

Underground

New York.

1951.

at the University of

Denver

1953. Michals receives his Bachelor of

Arts degree from the University of
Denver. Although he was not an art
mxajor, he was very interested in
Magritte, Balthus and De Chirico.
He enlists in the Army and is stationed
in

Germany.

1956. Having finished his military

duties, he settles in New York

and

registers at the Parsons School

of Design.

1957. He obtains his first professional

job, assistant art director for Dance

1964-66. Michals photographs the

deserted interiors of urban sites that are
usually bustling with people and
activity - laundromats, beauty parlors,

subway
1966.

stations, cafeterias

He decides

to

and

people

theaters.

his sites

with persons he uses as actors. Places

and persons both participate in his
stories and narratives, which represent
dreams or parables and which unfold

sequences. At first, each sequence

comprises six photographs; later
he sometimes uses nine photographs
Burlesque, 1979, fifteen Take One and
See Mt Fujiyama, 1975, or even twentysix The Journey of the Spirit after
in

Death, 1970.

magazine.
is

an Argus C3 camera. During his travels

he seems to discover his true
vocation, taking numerous pictures of

He

introduces photographs
texts handwritten
in the margins. These may be single
1974.

hired by Time Inc.,

to do graphics for the advertising
department. Just before leaving for a
three- week trip to the USSR, he borrows
1958. Michals

accompanied by

photographs or several arranged

in a sequence.

He produces his first works

combining photography and painting.

in Russia,

1979.

children, sailors and workers. Home

again, he takes a job in a graphic arts
agency, which closes down six months
later. He then decides to make a career
out of his newfound interest in photography With the help of the commercial

a new
decade, Michals seems to display,
among other things, a new interest in
politics and a marked concern for the
"intolerance of the moral majority."
1980. At the beginning of

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books by Duane Michals

1978. Merveilles d'Egypte. Denoel/

Filipacchi, Paris.
1970.

Sequences, Doubleday &

Co.,

New York.
Sequenze. Forum
1971.

The Journey

Editorial, MilarL

New York.

Things Are Queer. Fotogalerie

Wilde, Cologne.

Chance Meeting,

of the Spirit after

Death. Winterhouse & Co.,

1973.

Homage to Cavafy Ten Poems by

Constantine Cavafy, Ten Photographs
by Duane Michals, Addison House,
Danbury, New Hampshire.

Fotogalerie Wilde,

Cologne.
Paradise Regained, FFC Antwerpen
Fotogalerie Wilde, Cologne.

Duane Michals: Photographs

with Written Text.

1981.

Van Reekummuseum Apeldoora

Changements.

Editions Herschei,

Paris.

A Visit with Magritte. Matrix,

Providence.

(Postkartenfolio mit 6 Fotokarten).

1976. Take One and See Mt.
Fujiyama, Stefan Mihal, New

York.

Book on Duane Michals

Real Dreams. Addison House,
Danbury New Hampshire.
Vrais Reves. Editions du Chene, Paris.
1977.

1975.

The Photographic

Ronald

Illusion.

H. Bailey, Alskog, Los Angeles.

EXHIBITIONS

1963.

The Underground Gallery,

Focus Gallery, San Francisco.

New York.
1965.

The Underground Gallery,

New York.
1968.

The Underground Gallery,

1970.

Institute of

The

Camera Obscura,
Galerie

New York.
The Art

1978. Douglas Drake Gallery

Kansas City.
The Collection at 24, Miami.

Chicago, Chicago.

Museum of Modern Art,

Fiolet,

Stockholm.

Amsterdam.

Sidney Janis Gallery,

New York.

Galerie Wilde, Cologne.

Akron Art Institute, Akron.

New York.
La Remise du

1979.
1971.

The George Eastman House,

Rochester.
1972.

Museum

of

New Mexico,

Albuquerque.

San Francisco Art

San Francisco.

Institute,

Pare, Paris.

Canon Photo

Gallery, Geneva.
Douglas Drake Gallery, Kansas City
The Collection at 24, Miami.
Art Gallery, The University of Denver

Galerie Wilde, Cologne.

Nouvelles Images, La Haye.

Nova

Gallery,

Vancouver

1973. Galerie Delpire, Paris.

International Cultural Center, Anvers.

Kolnischer Kunstverein, Cologne.
1974. Frankfurter Kunstverein,
Frankfurt. Galeria 291, Milaa

Documenta,

Turin.

New York.

New York.

1975. Light Gallery,

Susan Spiritus Gallery,

Newport Beach.

Museum of Modern Art,

Bogota.

Image

Gallery, Seattle.
Sidney Janis Gallery, New York.
The Art Gallery, University of Pittsburgh.
Silver

School of Visual Arts,

Light Gallery,

1980. Carl Solway Gallery, Cincinnati.

Nouvelles Images, La Haye.

New York.

The Broxton Gallery, Los Angeles.

1981.

Galerie

Fiolet,

Amsterdam.

Gemeentemuseum, Apeldoorn.
1976. Jacques Bosser, Paris.
Sidney Janis Gallery, New York.
Galerie Die Briicke, Vienna.
The Texas Center for Photographic

Studies, Dallas.

Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati.

Ohio State University, Columbus.
Felix Handschin Galerie, Basel.
Douglas Drake Gallery, Kansas City.

Halstead Gallery, Birmingham.

Swarthmore College, Swarthmore.
The Atlanta Gallery of Photography,
Atlanta.
The Huntsville

Museum

of Art,

Huntsville.

Work

Galerie, Zurich.

Colorado Photo Arts Center, Denver

Philadelphia College of Art,
Philadelphia.

1977. Galerie Breiting, Berlin.

Paul Maenz, Cologne. G. Ray Hawkins

Gallery, Los Angeles.
Philadelphia College of Art.

"Fotographia vs. Realidad," Musee de

Monterrey, Mexico.
The Photographer's Gallery,
South Tarra, Australia.

PANTHEON PHOTO LIBRARY

American Photographers of the Depression
Eugene Aget
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Bruce Davidson
Early Color Photography
Robert Frank

Andre Kertesz
Jacques-Henri Lartigue
Duane Michals

Helmut Newton
The Nude
Alexander Rodchenko
W. Eugene Smith

Weegee
Brassai

Lee Friedlander

The Pantheon Photo Library

and produced by the
National Center of Photography in Paris
under the direction of Robert Delpire.

collection conceived

Duane Michals
Bom in 1932 in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, Duane
Michals discovered his vocation in 1958 when
he borrowed a camera for a three-week trip to
Russia. Since that time he has become famous
for such haunting narrative sequences as "The
Journey of the Spirit After Death;' "Paradise Re-

and "The Fallen Angels," among others.

Relying on props, double exposures, reflections,
and texts written on the margins of the images,
Michals occupies a singular place in the long
line of photographers who create the events they
capture on film.
gained,"

The Pantheon Photo Library, conceived and printed by the National Center of Photography in
Paris, brings together the best work of classic
and contemporary photographers in affordable
guides produced to the highest standards. The
series was the recipient of the International Center of Photography's first annual publication
award for distinguished books on photography.

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