Duane Michals
[Photographer, b. 1932, McKeesport, Pennsylvania, lives in New York.]
I didn’t need to go across country to photograph America. I just had to sit and pay attention to the contents of my life.
I arrived at writing [on photographs] from a frustration with the medium. I was frustrated by the silence of the still photograph.
Doing sequences was liberating. It liberated me from the decisive moment.
The best part of us is not what we see, it’s what we feel. We are what we feel. We are not what we look at .... We’re not our eyeballs, we’re our mind. People believe their eyeballs and they’re totally wrong... That’s why I consider most photographs extremely boring—just like Muzak, inoffensive, charming, another waterfall, another sunset. This time, colors have been added to protect the innocent. It’s just boring. But that whole arena of one’s experience—grief, loneliness—how do you photograph lust? I mean, how do you deal with these things? This is what you are, not what you see. It’s all sitting up here. I could do all my work sitting in my room. I don’t have to go anywhere.
