When I can I use Sunday to explore. Today I explored Duane Michals in The New York Times. At age 87, he has just opened Illusions of the Photographer: Duane Michals at the Morgan
He was born & raised in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, where my partner’s family came from. He moved to NYC in the mid-fifties, after art school and military service. He has lived and worked there ever since so the Times has extensive coverage of his artistic efforts, gallery and museum shows, public charity involvements, even his country house.
I have barely known of him but, from the current exhibit, I see that he has been fairly uniquely a photographer of ideas and that sounds so interesting. By contrast, Garry Winogrand walked out of one of his early exhibits. Winogrand was NOT a photographer of ideas and Michals’ work was not, to him, photography.
I searched the Times and have created a list of the links I thought interesting. Some just barely mention him but I kept those that gave a sense of him, even if brief.
I should say that I haven’t read much of this list. I’ll leave that for another exploration but here’s the linked index:
1963/11/10 – CAMERA NOTES; Contrasting Approaches In Two Print Shows
1970/10/25 – EXHIBITIONS
1972/10/15 – Photography by Gene Thornton
1976/03/14 – Document: New Monthly Devoted To Black‐and‐White
1976/10/10 – CAMERA VIEW: Creating Photographs by Peggy Sealfon
1976/10/22 – Art: The Fascination of Portraits
1978/12/08 – Art: What’s New, Whitney Style
1979/05/08 – Books: Photography Critic’s Views (A.D. Coleman) – one of the great photography reviewers
1980/11/23 – PICTURES AT EXHIBITIONS
1983/09/25 – PHOTOGRAPHY VIEW; GETTING AROUND THE LITERALNESS OF THE CAMERA
1985/01/20 – A SHOW THAT REVEALS AN ARTIST AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS POWERS
1985/08/01 – LIGHT, AIR AND A SPARE STYLE FOR A RESTORED 1825 FARMHOUSE
1989/08/11 – CAUTION: THIS ART MAY OFFEND; Photography
1990/09/09 – Reportage Is Out and Opinions Are In As the Camera Redefines Itself
1991/07/06 – Four Frames on America
1991/10/18 – Bolstering Narrative Qualities With Whimsy
1992/09/25 – Storytelling With a Deceptive Simplicity
1993/02/21 – THE NIGHT; Of Portraits Small and Big
1994/11/25 – Questions Without Answers
1997/01/05 – Making Art Out of Whitman’s Stirring Words
1998/11/29 – ART REVIEW; Reflections of Whitman In a City He Loved
2000/05/07 – Self-portrait; DUANE MICHAL
2000/08/13 – Lives; Portraits of the Artists by Duane Michals
2001/11/16 – ‘Who Is Sidney Sherman?’
2004/10/08 – Revisiting the Past With Someone Who’s No Longer There
2005/11/20 – How to Act Like a Poet in Black and White
2013/10/31 – Duane Michals: Heart of the Question
2014/10/30 – Duane Michals: Looking Back, Moving Forward
2014/11/02 – Documents of a Contrarian
2019/10/18 – T Suggests: A Photographer’s Eclectic Selections From the Morgan Library
2019/10/29 – Duane Michals Searches the Morgan and Finds Himself
Enjoy!
Jake