Duane Michals
[Photographer, b. 1932, McKeesport, Pennsylvania, lives in New York.]

 I use photography to help me explain my experiences to myself. 
 I believe in the invisible. I do not believe in the definitive reality of things around us. For me, reality is the intuition and the imagination and the quiet voice inside my head that says: isn’t that extraordinary? The things in our lives are the shadows of reality, just as we ourselves are shadows. 
 I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see. 
 People believe in the reality of photographs, but not in the reality of paintings. That gives photographers an enormous advantage. Unfortunately, photographers also believe in the reality of photographs. 
 You can’t teach art, so ART SCHOOL is a contradiction in terms. 
 I write with this photograph not to tell you what you can see, rather to express what is invisible. I write to express these feelings. We are our feelings. 
 You have two choices in life—doing and bullshit. I hate photographers who talk about photographs but never take any. And the only way you’re ever going to grow... two things, one you have to take risks, you have to be able to let go of all your preconceived notions of what photography should be, and open yourself to the possibilities. 
 [Photography] deals with religious hypocrisy, and abortion, and homosexuality, all the buzzwords in American culture. Everything should be subject to photography, not just the polite things like moonrise and sunsets and tits and ass. I mean everything, your dreams and your nightmares and Margaret Thatcher. 
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