Duane Michals: Biography and Foundations of Photographic Narrative

Duane Michals is a North American photographer who began to enter this world when he was very young, By chance, when he didn't even have a camera of his own, but would forever change the future of this art.

He broke with established visual traditions during the sixties, a time marked by photojournalism, proposing a new way of photographing that does not pretend to document the truth, but everything that surrounds it. In today's article we will see who he was and why he is so important.

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Why was Duane Michals important?

Approaching cinematographic storytelling, in 1966 he introduced the photographic sequence technique, to tell imagined stories. But later he was frustrated: he saw that the photographs were not enough for him to explain everything he wanted to narrate, so he decided to introduce texts in his images.

He could be defined as a committed photographer, who he decided use photography to narrate everything that escapes reality

, being the metaphysical themes, those things imperceptible to the human eye, some of his great passions. Many define him as a kind person who moves with the lightness and joy of a child, but who contemplates the world with the conscience of a wise man.

Self-taught, Michals has not been conditioned by the conventions of traditional photography, on the contrary. His technique has always been based on trial and error, a fact that has allowed him crossing the limits of photographic language. The copies of him are very small and the handwritten ones of him generate a feeling of intimacy that overwhelms the viewer who looks at them.

Biography of Duane Michals

Duane Michals was born in 1932 in Pennsylvania into a working-class family. From a very young age he became interested in art, taking his first steps at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburg, where he received watercolor classes. Later he studied Fine Arts at the University of Denver.

Little by little, he will see that his hometown, McKeesport, is getting small for him. It is for this reason that he decided to embark on an adventure to New York, where he began to study a postgraduate degree in graphic design which he never finished and where he worked as a model maker for the magazine Time.

His passion for photography arose by chance, thanks to a trip he made to the former Soviet Union in 1958, under the curiosity to see with his own eyes what was happening in Moscow in the context of the Cold War. That trip was a true revolution, since in it she discovered his curiosity and interest in photography.

Without having received any photographic training and with a borrowed camera, he dedicated himself to taking portraits of people who were on the street, which were immediately successful thanks to its simplicity and frankness.

When he returns to New York, he quits graphic designer job and starts his photographic career. His first exhibition was held in 1963 at the Underground Gallery in New York, where he exhibited the photographs of the trip to the former Soviet Union.

It should be taken into account that at that time the United States and the USSR were mired in the Cold War and the work did not sit well with the conservative North American society. But this fact made the expo attract enough attention and he began to work for prestigious magazines, such as Esquire Y Vogue among other.

Later, he began to specialize in making portraits of relevant characters, reaching portray figures such as Clint Eastwood, Madonna or Andy Warhol. Among them stand out those that he took from his admired René Magritte, the famous surrealist painter, the first of what he calls "prosaic portraits", in which he tries to explain to the public who she really is. person. Still, he points out that he will never be able to fully capture the soul of the photographed and wishes luck to those photographers who believe they will.

However, the first artistic work of him made in complete independence would not arrive until 1964, when he presented his first series, "Empty New York", where he photographed a deserted New York, without the presence of life human. He thus portrayed a New York far removed from the so-called city that never sleeps. Without the hustle and bustle, New York was dressed in melancholy.

Michals: the pioneer of photographic narrative

It was precisely in these New York scenes that Michals discovered theater sets that were waiting for the actors to enter and for the performance to begin. He understood that human reality could be seen as theater, and he understood photography as a vehicle for storytelling.

For this reason, in 1966 he introduced the photosequence technique to tell imagined stories. He composes stories by posing photographed subjects to later transfer these scenes into frames.

These sequences are what propelled this artist to fame. He builds stories with series of photographs that develop a narrative in time, leaving aside the isolated image and allowing him to go further with his imagination. It is said that his sequences are for the cinema the same as the poems for the novel.

Several of his sequences explore his great curiosities: what happens after death, what memory is or how the human condition should be represented. For example, if the traditional thing was to represent death through cemeteries and tombstones, for him, this was one of the fateful consequences of him. Michals was more interested in metaphysical implications, what the person feels when he dies and where his soul goes.

We can see an example of this in "The Spirit Leaves The Body", a photosequence where Michals portrays a body without life and from it, through the technique of double exposure, a spirit arises, creating images that are very poetics.

Another of those pieces where he talks about death is "Grandpa Goes to Heaven", a series of photographs that shows a child next to his grandfather's bed. From one photograph to the next, the child's grandfather spreads wings, gets out of bed and says goodbye to his grandson before going out the window.

He says that photography is very restrictive, because it is based on reality and reality is so prescribed that we accept some of its factors. While many photographers show you what you already know, what he does is break with this reality and capture the moment before and after, all creating a story. Other photographers don't do this, because the "turning point", what they wanted to show, was their own concept of photography.

He invented his own concept. It is not just about photographing, but about expressing. Michals loves to read, and for this reason, he does not draw on other photographers but on other writers. Other photographers limit themselves to capturing only what they see and what they don't see they don't photograph. For him his problem was the following: How could he photograph what is not seen?

It is for this reason that in 1969, Michals began to write by hand, on the surface of his photographs, short texts that serve to guide the viewer from what is imperceptible in his stories. Unintentionally, or willingly, he was thus denying the conviction that a picture is worth a thousand words.

The phrases are a complement to what cannot be seen in the images. They are not, therefore, an auxiliary complement, but are a fundamental element for the understanding of the work.

It is in these works where Michals reveals to a greater extent his existential philosophy and his political position of absolute tolerance and defense of human rights. An example of this is from "The Unfortunate Man" (1976), where he portrays a man with his boots on. hands, as a metaphor of the person we have sex who cannot touch the person he loves because they have forbidden.

An artist who continues to create

Today (in October 2020), at the age of 88, Michals has established himself as one of the most important artists of the 20th century. His work is made up of many abstract elements, largely as a consequence of the great influence he received from surrealism, specifically from artists such as Balthus and Magritte. Play and irony characterize many of his works, and Michals also uses these instruments to innocently analyze his fears.

In constant evolution, Michals shot, in 2016, the first of a series of short films. He has found in the video a new language to continue playing with his great creativity. He is the scriptwriter, the director, and sometimes the actor, of videos that return to investigate intimate, existential or political issues, with all the wisdom of someone who has drunk from auteur cinema.

No matter what the medium is, what really becomes valuable for him is inventing new ways to communicate with the rest of the world, reaching the deepest part of being or laughing at oneself.

Bibliographic references

• Benedict-Jones, L. (2014). "Storyteller: The Photographs of Duane Michals." Prestel.
• Viloria, I. (2016). "Who the hell is Duane Michals?" Lines on art.
• Crespo, G. (2016). "Duane Michals, the fable of a dream". The country.