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.
Interpretation
Photographs should challenge viewers and present new perspectives rather than simply replicating reality.
In this quote, Duane Michals emphasizes that the true artistry of photography lies in its ability to provoke thought and offer fresh insights into subjects, rather than merely capturing their appearances. He argues that anyone can take a straightforward picture, but it takes skill and creativity to reveal deeper understandings and new ways of seeing people through the lens of a camera.
In practice
A photography exhibit showcasing works that challenge traditional views of portraiture.
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.
Flowers construct the most charming geometries: circles like the sun, ovals, cones, curlicues and a variety of triangular eccentricities, which when viewed with the eye of a magnifying glass seem a Lilliputian frieze of psychedelic silhouettes.
A lot of photographers walk around looking for something 'out there,' but I'm very much interested in what's 'in here.'
There are those photographers who have made a whole career doing commercial work but have never had a museum show, and then there are others who've only had museum shows but couldn't survive for five seconds in the real world of photography. But I've done absolutely everything.
Photography is essentially an act of recognition by street photographers, not an act of invention. Photographers might respond to an old man’s face, or an Arbus freak, or the way light hits a building—and then they move on. Whereas in all the other art forms, take William Blake, everything that came to that paper never existed before. It’s the idea of alchemy, of making something from nothing.
If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.
When I was building the Vietnam Memorial, I never once asked the veterans what it was like in the war, because from my point of view, you don't pry into other people's business.
Perhaps the mission of an artist is to interpret beauty to people - the beauty within themselves.
All the music I loved as a child, people thought it was junk. People were unaware of the subtext in so many of those records but if you were a kid you were just completely tuned in, even though you didn't always say - you wouldn't dare say it was beautiful.
Yes, I am the first Latino poet laureate in the United States. But I'm also here for everyone and from everyone. My voice is made by everyone's voices.
I have no time to explain now. It is a thrilling tale, I wish to do it justice.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.