Duane Michals

D U A N E M I C H A L S
Duane Michals (b. 1932, McKeesport, Pa.) received a BA from the University of Denver in 1953 and worked as a graphic designer until his involvement with photography deepened in the late 1950s. Michals made significant, creative strides in the field of photography during the 1960s. In an era heavily influenced by photojournalism and its aesthetic, Michals manipulated the medium to communicate narratives using a distinctive pictorial technique. The sequences, for which he is widely known, appropriate cinema’s frame-by-frame format. Comprising single prints, each sequence depicts the unfolding of an event or reveals various perspectives on a specific subject. Michals has also incorporated text as a key component in his single and multipart works. Rather than serving a didactic or explanatory function, his handwritten text adds another dimension to the images’ meaning and gives voice to Michals’s singular musings. Balancing fragility and strength, gravity and humor, Michals’s work represents universal themes such as love, desire, memory, death, and immortality.
Over the past five decades, Michals’s work has been exhibited in the United States and abroad. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, hosted Michals’s first solo exhibition (1970), and a year later the George Eastman House, Rochester, NY, mounted another (1971). More recently, he has had one-person shows at the Odakyu Museum, Tokyo (1999), and at the International Center of Photography, New York (2005). In 2008, Michals will celebrate his 50th anniversary as a photographer with a retrospective exhibition at the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, Greece and the Scavi Scaligeri in Verona, Italy. His work has been included in numerous group shows including, “Cosmos” at the Musée de Beaux-Arts de Montréal (1999), “The Century of the Body: Photoworks 1900-2000” at the Musee de l’Elysee, Lausanne (1999), “From Camouflage to Free Style” at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1999), and “The Ecstasy of Things” at the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland.
In recognition of his contributions to photography, Michals has been honored with a CAPS Grant (1975), a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1976), the International Center of Photography Infinity Award for Art (1989), the Foto España International Award (2001), and an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, Mass.(2005). Michals’s work belongs to numerous permanent collections in the U.S. and abroad, including the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Michals’s archive is housed at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Monographs of Michals’s work include Homage to Cavafy (1978); Nature of Desire (1989); Duane Michals: Now Becoming Then (1990); Salute, Walt Whitman (1996); The Essential Duane Michals (1997); Questions Without Answers (2001); The House I Once Called Home (2003) and Foto Follies / How Photography Lost Its Virginity on the Way to the Bank (2006). Forthcoming publications include 50 (Admira Photography, June 2008); a collection of Michals’s writing (Delpire Editeur, Fall 2008); and his Japaneseinspired, color photographs (Steidl, Fall 2008).
Michals lives and works in New York City.

“Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be”. – Duane Michals – 1966

“I think photographs should be provocative and not tell you what you already know. It takes no great powers or magic to reproduce somebody’s face in a photograph. The magic is in seeing people in new ways”. – Duane Michals

“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”. – Duane Michals “If I was concerned about being accepted, I would have been doing Ansel Adams lookalikes, because that was easily accepted. Everything I did was never accepted…but luckily for me, my interest in the subject and my passion for the subject took me to the point that I wasn’t wounded by that, and eventually, people came around to me.” – Duane Michals “And in not learning the rules, I was free. I always say, you’re either defined by the medium or you redefine the medium in terms of your needs”. – Duane Michals More about Duane Michals here

Leonard Freed’s photographs of The March on Washington

From the ever excellent Denver Post blog we find this selection of images by the great Leonard Freed

On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech and 250,000 people participated in the largest peaceful demonstration for civil rights ever witnessed in America. Magnum photographer Leonard Freed documented The March on Washington and his images endure as a testament to the historic importance of that day. The demonstration ultimately led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Freed’s powerful images of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom will be featured in two group exhibitions in Washington, DC, one at the Library of Congress and the other at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the march this month. From the hundreds of images that Freed made of the march, fifty-seven photographs were chosen for the recently published book, “This Is the Day: The March on Washington photographs by Leonard Freed,” published by Getty.

Leonard Freed (American, 1929-2006) began making photographs in 1954 and joined Magnum Photos as a full-time member in 1972. Freed’s photographs are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

August 28, 1963. On that historic day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his ÒI Have a DreamÓ speech at the Lincoln Memorial and 250,000 people participated in the largest peaceful demonstration for civil rights ever witnessed in America. Freed Photo Credit: All photographs © Estate of Leonard Freed Ð Magnum Photos (Brigitte Freed).

 

 

See all of the images here

William Eggleston to receive Outstanding Contribution to Photography award

The BJP tells us that William Eggleston is to be awarded a prize for his outstanding contribution to photography, can’t even think what his honest response to that might be…..try any of these

 I don’t have a burning desire to go out and document anything. It just happens when it happens. It’s not a conscious effort, nor is it a struggle. Wouldn’t do it if it was. The idea of the suffering artist has never appealed to me. Being here is suffering enough. 

 You can take a good picture of anything. A bad one, too. 

 Whatever it is about pictures, photographs, it’s just about impossible to follow up with words. They don’t have anything to do with each other. 

 I had this notion of what I called a democratic way of looking around, that nothing was more or less important. 

 I am at war with the obvious. 

 I don’t look at other photographs much at all. I don’t know why. I study my own a lot. 

 There is no particular reason to search for meaning. 

 The way I have always looked at it is the world is in color. And there’s nothing we can do about that. 

“Recognised today as the pioneer of colour photography and the personal documentary style, William Eggleston has been producing cutting-edge work for over 50 years,” say the organisers of the Sony World Photography Awards, which has selected the US photographer at this year’s recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to Photography award.

Untitled. 1695-1968 fr. Los Alamos, Beehive. Image © William Eggleston, Eggleston Artistic Trust, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.

Untitled. 1980 fr – Lousianna Project – Hot Sauce. Image © William Eggleston, Eggleston Artistic Trust, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.

Untitled, 1971-1974. Image © William Eggleston, Eggleston Artistic Trust, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.

Read more: http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/news/2259431/william-eggleston-to-receive-outstanding-contribution-to-photography-award#ixzz2PtCaP0FC
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William Eggleston

William Eggleston could be considered one of those annoying photographers who have great acclaim but seem to photograph just what is in front of him and it is then considered ‘art’. There is no doubt, that on one level the simplicity of his images and the feeling that they are only a stones throw away from being snap shots is frustrating. Frustrating because it is so difficult to pin down what makes them so absorbing. As with many artists when you show their work to people they either get it or they don’t, and this is telling; somehow those that do are more likely to become your friends. There is an outside nature to his images, domestic as many of them are you are still drawn to the edge by them. Should you be interested in Eggleston, well yes if you are interested in photography. Those photographers who provide decoration, amazing images but essentially decoration give you answers immediately but Eggleston mostly gives you questions and that is intriguing. “His first exhibit was a one-man show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. This was the first photography exhibit to show solely color work. Up until that point, black-and-white was considered the only true photographic art form. The curator of the museum, John Szarkowski took a big chance. He loved the work. He called it perfect. Most didn’t consider it perfect though. The show was strongly criticized. Hilton Kramer, of The New York Times, wrote, “Perfect? Perfectly banal, maybe…perfectly boring, certainly.” Even Ansel Adams wrote to Szarkowski asking him what those photos were doing hanging on the walls of the MoMA.” (from Faded + Blurred) I think the point about Ansel Adams just reinforces my views on Eggleston.

As Nicole Rae says on the blog Faded + Blurred “Despite his often mundane subject matter, he is simply not your ordinary photographer. His first one-man exhibit at the MoMA in 1976 was both heralded as being genius and was criticized as being the most hated show of the year. Some see his work as being perfect – the angles, composition, color, everything pushing the edges. While others see a jumbled mess of boring things, just thrown together, like he just shot from his hip with no thought behind it whatsoever. Love him or hate him, William Eggleston changed photographic history and changed the way we look at the world.”

A potted history of his life and achievements starts in 1939, born in Memphis, Tennessee

1957 Acquires his first camera, a Canon rangefinder.
1958 Acquires his first Leica.
1959 Sees Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “The Decisive Moment” and Walker Evans’ “American Photographs”.
1965 Begins to experiment with color transparency film.
1967 Starts to use color negative film. Goes to New York and meets Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander and Diane Arbus. Presents his work to John Szarkowski at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
1974 Harry Lunn publishes the first portfolio of dye-transfer photographs, “14 Pictures.” Receives a Guggenheim Fellowship. Appointed Lecturer in Visual and Environmental Studies at The Carpenter Center, Harvard University. Completes his “Los Alamos” project.
1976 The Museum of Modern Art exhibits work in first solo exhibition of color photographs accompanied by a monograph, “William Eggleston’s Guide.” Commissioned by Rolling Stone to photograph Plains, Georgia before the election of President Jimmy Carter. Project becomes “Election Eve,” the first of the artist’s books of original photographs published by Caldecot Chubb.
1978 Appointed Researcher in Color Video at Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the invitation of Richard Leacock. Photographs the Gulf states on a commission from A.T. & T. Receives another award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Visits Jamaica.
1979 Chubb published three smaller volumes of original photographs, “Morals of Vision,” “Wedgwood Blue,” and “Flowers.”
1980 Travels to Kenya with Caldecot Chubb and creates a body of work known as “The Streets Are Clean on Jupiter.” Commissioned to produce the “Louisiana Project” and to photograph throughout the state.
1983 Begins to photograph in Berlin, Salzburg and Graz and titles the series “Kiss me Kracow”. Commissioned to photograph the mansion of Elvis Presley, Graceland.
1986 Invited by director David Byrne to visit and photograph the making of his film “True Stories”. Commissioned by the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art to photograph in Egypt.
1988 Begins a series of color photographs of England he calls “English Rose”.
1989 Photographs in the orange groves of the Transvaal. Accepts one of 54 Master Photographers of 1960-1979 awards from Photographic Society of Japan. Plays the role of musician Jerry Lee Lewis’ father in the movie “Great Balls of Fire”.

1996 Commissioned by Coca-Cola to photograph their plants in four cities in the U.S. Invited by producer Caldecot Chubb to visit and photograph the making of the film “Eve’s Bayou”. Receives the University of Memphis Distinguished Achievement Award.

2000 Commissioned by Paramount Pictures to photograph studio lot in Hollywood, California. Commissioned by the Cartier Foundation to photograph the American desert.

2002 Travels extensively and photographs locations including Pasadena, California; the New Jersey Shore; Queens, New York; St. Petersburg, Russia; and Tuscany, Italy.
2003 Travels to and photographs the Niagara Falls area. Travels to Arles, France to attend Rencontres d’Arles and meets Henri Cartier-Bresson. Accepts Gold Medal for Photography from National Arts Club, New York.
2004 Receives the Getty Images Lifetime Achievement Award at the International Center of Photography (ICP) Infinity Awards. Travels to Hawaii and photographs with new panoramic format camera. Travels to Madrid to accept 2004 Photoespana Award. Travels to Clovis, New Mexico and photographs the city and Norman Petty Recording Studios.
2005 William Eggleston In The Real World, a documentary film on Eggleston by Michael Almereyda is completed. Travels to Xilitla, Mexico to photograph Las Pozas. Longtime advisor and friend, Walter Hopps dies. Invited and travels to Tokyo to be guest judge at Canon’s New Cosmos Photography Contest.

In between these many awards and citations he was commissioned to travel and photograph for corporations, national art bodies and film directors.

Eggleston said, “A photographer friend of mine bought a book of Magnum work with some Cartier-Bresson pictures that were real art, period. You didn’t think a camera made the picture. Sure didn’t think of somebody taking the picture at a certain speed with a certain speed film. I couldn’t imagine anybody doing anything more than making a perfect Cartier-Bresson. Which I could do, finally.”

More from Faded + Blurred by Nicole Rae “Although he started his career working in black and white, he soon changed to color. The biggest problem he found was getting the colors the way that he wanted them. He tried having them developed commercially, which didn’t give him the results he wanted. He then went to Kodak slide film, which still didn’t work. In the early 1970s, he came across a process called dye-transfer. Also used by the artist Robert Rauschenberg, dye-transfer is a long and complicated process involving separating the individual colors from the master negative. It was a technique used mainly for advertising but, when Eggleston saw it, he knew it was perfect for his prints. He often said he could never get his colors as rich or as saturate as he wanted until he started using this process.”

“Sometimes I like the idea of making a picture that does not look like a human picture. Humans make pictures which tend to be about five feet above the ground looking out horizontally. I like very fast flying insects moving all over and I wonder what their view is from moment to moment. I have made a few pictures which show that physical viewpoint. . . . The tricycle is similar. It is an insect’s view or it could be a child’s view.”WE

Nicole Rae again…”Color became the main subject in his photographs. The objects are secondary to how the color looks and fits within the composition. He has been highly influenced by artists Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, which you can see in his images. There are blocks of color, there are shapes, there are angles and lines. He is not concerned about his photographs having meaning behind them. He says, “A picture is what it is… It wouldn’t make any sense to explain them. Kind of diminishes them.”

The William Eggleston Trust has a wide range of information on their site including details of all of his books, monographs and portfolios, also there is a list of articles and essays with links through to the original pieces where they exist on line.

From the Getty Museum site...“This plain, unassuming suburban house dominated by its television antenna could be titled Anywhere, USA. The image demonstrates William Eggleston’s interest in tract housing and particularly in new Southern suburbs. This theme runs through the over two thousand photographs of his seven-year “Los Alamos” project, for which he had actually photographed all over the United States. “

Nicole Rae says “Eggleston is able to simply capture moments, without being overly concerned with the why behind it. He takes one photograph and moves on. If he doesn’t get it the first time, he doesn’t go back to try to recapture it. The moment is over and he has moved on. His subjects are things most of us would consider to be boring, but he takes the everyday, often mundane objects in our lives and makes them beautiful. He turns them into works of art. If you look at each of his images and take the subjects themselves out and just see the color, shapes, and lines; seeing how it all fits together. That is art.”

There is an excellent TV documentary as part of the Imagine series and it can be found on line here

Many of his books are still available on Amazon and are  beautiful and engaging, I recently purchased William Eggleston Guide from his first MOMA exhibition for £15 They might not be first editions but they are true to the originals and looking at images on paper is always better than on a screen, somehow it demands more of your attention. I also bought” Two And One Quarter” but I see it has now nearly doubled in price so get them while they are still cheap.

I had planned to write a long piece on Eggleston myself but having found the excellent Nicole Rae I found she had said all I wanted to say, so do go and visit Faded + Blurred, I will leave the last sage words to her

“When you look at Eggleston’s work, you get out of it what you get out of it. There is no correct interpretation of it, no right or wrong. It either affects you or it doesn’t. There is no reason behind it and maybe we need to stop looking for a reason. Maybe that’s what art is – just something that affects us on an emotional level. We don’t always need an explanation for it. Sometimes we can just look at an image and appreciate it for what it is without looking for something deeper.”

Eggleston has published his work extensively. He continues to live and work in Memphis, and travels considerably for photographic projects.

Here is another page full of pictures and editorial you may find useful Artsy

The New Stars of Photography

“In a camera-phone world, serious photography matters more than ever. To capture the medium’s vitality, Smithsonian asked 13 acknowledged masters to choose one emerging photographer who reflects the promise of a new generation. Their selections show that it’s not about the camera but the eye behind it.”

Here is one for you to savour, go here to see who else is considered to be a rising star

Lisa K. Blatt

Shooting Stars: Cindy Sherman presents Lisa K. Blatt

 “My original response to Lisa’s work was visceral. I was intrigued by her minimalist compositions and use of subtle or brilliant color. I found something mysterious in them, as if they were so carefully composed as to be hiding some relevant content that one has to discern. Gorgeous nature photographs tend to seem like documentation and rarely transcend the surface of their loveliness. But while Lisa’s photographs clearly have a simple majestic beauty that has traces of natural or scientific photography, they are transcendent because of what I perceive as this element of an imbued narrative.

Her commitment to rediscovering the mystery and beauty of the hot and cold deserts of the earth, her true passion for these places, makes this work so resounding. It ultimately is a documentation of sorts—of her passion for these places that come alive in her eyes, in her camera.” — Cindy Sherman

Robin Maddock

Shooting Stars: Martin Parr presents Robin Maddock

 “Maddock’s work clearly demonstrates that he is a force to be reckoned with within the tradition of British documentary photography. In his second book, God Forgotten Face, he builds a narrative around the city of Plymouth that just seems to work; the project is heightened by being “for and against” his now ex-girlfriend. Maddock’s views and snatches of life are both surreal and individual. He has the enviable ability to turn nothing much into something quite profound”. — Martin Parr

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/multimedia/The-New-Stars-of-Photography.html#ixzz1nxkyOrS0

Britain’s photographic revolution

Fascinating article in the Guardian/Observer by Sean O’Hagan at the weekend regarding the state of photography as considered as art in Britain. O’Hagen is one of the most impressive writers on photography in Britain and the article absolutely to the point.

“The big art institutions here are finally catching up with their American counterparts, with a new photography gallery at the V&A, increased prominence at the Tate and exciting plans elsewhere. We asked four leading curators about the state of the art……..The September issue of the art magazine Frieze ran a glossary of “keywords” in contemporary art and culture. Under “Photography” the compilers wrote: “The first photograph was produced in 1826. In 2009 Tate advertised the following job for the first time: Curator (Photography and International Art). Discuss.” The question invited was: why had it taken so long for photography to be viewed as a serious art form in Britain? The Museum of Modern Art in New York, for instance, appointed its first curator of photography, Beaumont Newhall, in 1940.”.………….more

 

Snap happy: leading curators (l-r) Martin Barnes (V&A), Brett Rogers (Photographers’ Gallery), Simon Baker (Tate Modern) and Charlotte Cotton (the Media Space). Portrait by Suki Dhanda for Observer New Review

Diane Arbus: humanist or voyeur?

This interesting article by Sean O’Hagan at guardian.co.uk, is, as usual from O’Hagen, an intelligent and well thought out piece, here is an excerpt

“When we look at an Arbus photograph, we cannot help feeling that we are intruders or voyeurs, even though her subjects are tied to a time and place that has all but vanished. A sense of complicity – hers and ours – lies at the very heart of her power. Her images hold us in their sway even when our better instincts tell us to look away. Perhaps her greatest gift is that she understood that conflict instinctively, and did more than anyone to exploit it artistically.”…….more

Camera obscura … Diane Arbus poses for a portrait in New York c 1968 Photograph: Roz Kelly/Getty Images

Related

Wrestling with Diane Arbus

Exhibition preview: Diane Arbus, Cardiff

 Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus

Tales of the unsuspecting

Duane Michals Sequences

Duane Michals (b. February 18, 1932) is an American photographer. Largely self-taught, his work is noted for its innovation and artistry. Michals’ style often features photo-sequences and the incorporation of text to examine emotion and philosophy, resulting in a unique body of work.

Michals grew up in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. In 1953 he received a B.A. from the University of Denver. In 1956 he went on to study design at the Parsons School of Design with a plan to becoming a graphic designer, however he did not complete his studies. In 1958 while on a holiday in the USSR he discovered an interest in photography. The photographs he made during this trip became his first exhibition held in 1963 at the Underground Gallery in New York City.

For a number of years, Michals worked in commercial photography, working for Esquire and Mademoiselle, and he covered the filming of The Great Gatsby for Vogue (1974). He did not have a studio. Instead, he took portraits of people in their environment, which was a contrast to the method of other photographers at the time, such as Avedon and Irving Penn.

In 1968 Michals was hired by the government of Mexico to photograph the 1968 Olympic Games. In 1970 his works were shown at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. The portraits he took between 1958 and 1988 would later become the basis of his book, Album.

In 1976 Michals received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Michals also produced the art for the album Synchronicity (by The Police) in 1983, and Richard Barone’s Clouds Over Eden album in 1993.

go here for more articles on Duane Michals

american photo

1000words

Storyteller: The Photographs of Duane Michals

http://michalsphotography.tumblr.com/

 

 

Before Colour: photographer William Eggleston in black-and-white

Variously described as the father of colur photography, William Eggleston is now recognised as having started his off beat imaging making in black and white. Eggleston in black-and-white? It seems a contradiction in terms. But here, finally, is the evidence that even the most famous colour photographer of all once saw the world around him in monochrome.As these rediscovered prints reveal, the man who made colour photography into an artform worked brilliantly in monochrome – and his eye for unsettling detail is every bit as sharp

If you don’t know his colour work have a look here for a taste