Duane Michals Case

Duane Michals

Duane Michals was born in 1937 in Pennsylvania. His interest in Art began at the young age of fourteen. Michals started to attend art classes at the Carnegie Museum of Art. He later Received a BA from the University of Denver in 1953. In 1956, after service in the army, he continued to pursue his interest in the arts at the Parsons School of Design in New York City, where he trained as a graphic designer. Not long after, In 1958, Michals traveled to the Soviet Union and really embraced his photography talent. Using a borrowed camera, he recorded a series of plain, yet elegant portraits of the people he encountered during his travels --images that would lead to his first public exhibition. Commercial success came quickly, and he received commissioned from "Esquire", "The New Yorker" and other magazines.

Duane Michals then dedicated himself to free-lance work. In 1966 he did his first series of posed photographs that were narrative in nature. These "sequences" of poetic as well as comic photos, in which Michals himself would also appear, were published in 1969 and extended his fame to Europe. Michals has also incorporated text as a key component in his works. His concept in designing sequence images is to make sense of issues that make sense to him. After 1976 there was a re-emphasis on images with captions and Michals also began to paint over his photographs, while the narrative aspect remained. Michals lives and works in New York.

“This Photograph is my Proof” 1974, is a one of his famous text and image pair. In the photograph it reads,

This is my proof. There was that afternoon, when things were still good between

us, and she embraced me, and we were so happy. It did happen, she did love me. Look see for yourself!

We know that the disconnect is real