Duane Michals

Born in 1932 in McKeesport, Pennsylvania(US)
Lives and works in New York City, New York (US)

A failed attempt to photograph reality

1987
Black and white photograph, gelatin-silver print
20,2 x 25,3 cm
Year of Purchase: 1987

In order to understand Duane Michals’ work you have to know its origins. His parents were Czech (like his contemporary Warhol) and at a very early age they handed down to him their Catholic faith, which was nevertheless tempered by all the magic and mystery of the culture of a Central Europe intrigued by mumbo jumbo. There’s something else, too: his first name derives from the name of the son of the house where his mother was employed. This model, this rich but never encountered eponym, would mark him all the more because it would forever be remote and mysterious (he committed suicide during his first university year). A family probably issues from obsession with the double and a fascination with death and everything that illustrates intimate relationships within a group. In 1966 Michals began to develop a photographic style where the narrative results from short sequences of images put together. In 1974, these simple sequences were complemented by short sentences handwritten directly on the print. The works belonging to the Frac collection are in this particular style, where the irrational, tinged with an undeniable poetry, constructs strange narratives which, in the end, all question the definition of a human identity at the time of its mechanized reproduction.

^{Damien Sausset}