Duane Michals

Jacob Cavenee

Art 177- Digital Photography

Professor Pease

19 April 2016

Duane Michals

            Duane Michals was born on February 18, 1932 in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. Michals obsession with art came in 1946, while taking college classes at Carnegie Institute in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania (Art Net). In 1953, Michals received his bachelors from the University of Denver in Colorado (Art Net). After completing his schooling, Michals enlisted and was drafted into the army. After finishing his service, Michals joined the Parson School of Design in 1956, intending to become a graphic designer, but ended up not finishing his studies (Art Net). Michals interest in photography started after he went to Russia on vacation. While Michals is not educated in photography, he worked as a commercial photographer for the magazines; Mademoiselle and Esquire (Art Net). One of his most memorable piece of work was covering the filming of The Great Gatsby for vogue in 1974. While most photographers at the time and still today have studios, Michals did not and preferred to take portraits of people in their own environment (Art Net). Two of Michals famous trademarks were using a series to tell a story and give information that the images could not convey by writing text near his photographs. Michals thoughts of schooling for photography are, “If you already know what you’re doing, you’re not really being creative. Creativity is the discovery that you make in the process of evolving. So that’s essentially the most important thing to me, to always stay open.” (Reznik). Some of Michals influences come from Lewis Carroll, William Blake, and Rene Magritte (Art Net). A series is a number of things of a similar kind coming one after another, all one theme. A sequence is a particular order of things that follow each other, all one story. Michals has received two awards for his photography, a gold medal for photography from the national arts club in 1994 and a master series award from the school of visual art in 2000 (Art Net). I love that Michals isn’t afraid to challenge photography with his own ideas and tell people and students to take what you know and run with it. Michals has made remarkable contributions to the artistic photography movement.

Work Citied

"Duane Michals (American, Born 1932)." Duane Michals Biography – Duane Michals on Artnet. Art Net, n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.

Reznik, Eugene. "Interview: Duane Michals on 50 Years of Sequences and Staging Photos." American Photo. American Photo Mag, n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.