Duane Michals

I already know what things look like - I don't want description. People believe in appearances, and I don't believe in appearances…

— Duane Michals

All good children's books, I think, address metaphysical issues in some kind of way.

— Duane Michals

My work is about my life as an event, and I find myself to be very temporal, transient.

— 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…

— Duane Michals

Photography does deal with 'truth' or a kind of superficial reality better than any of the other arts, but it never questions…

— Duane Michals

People of my generation who became photographers in the late fifties, early sixties, there were no rewards in photography. There were no…

— Duane Michals

Taking photographs and writing is my way of saying I was here, I saw this, I felt this, I heard this.

— Duane Michals

I write in order to express what the photo itself cannot say. A photograph of my father doesn't tell me what I…

— Duane Michals

If I indulge myself and surrender to memory, I can still feel the knot of excitement that gripped me as I turned…

— Duane Michals

Art has to address eternal issues.

— Duane Michals

I believe in the invisible. I do not believe in the definitive reality of things around us. For me, reality is the…

— Duane Michals

All good work has magic in it, and addresses the mind in a subtle way.

— Duane Michals

Art is not fashionable. That's why fashion and art are two different things. Fashion can never be art because fashion deals with…

— Duane Michals

There are those photographers who have made a whole career doing commercial work but have never had a museum show, and then…

— Duane Michals

Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be.

— Duane Michals

Flowers construct the most charming geometries: circles like the sun, ovals, cones, curlicues and a variety of triangular eccentricities, which when viewed…

— Duane Michals

If you look at a photograph, and you think, 'My isn't that a beautiful photograph,' and you go on to the next…

— Duane Michals

Taking the photograph is the easiest part for me

— Duane Michals

To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.

— Duane Michals

Think photographs should be provocative and not tell you what you already know. It takes no great powers or magic to reproduce…

— Duane Michals

How foolish of me to believe that it would be that easy. I had confused the appearance of trees and automobiles, and…

— Duane Michals

Most portraits are lies. People are rarely what they appear to be, especially in front of a camera. You might know me…

— Duane Michals

Photographers tend not to photograph what they can’t see, which is the very reason one should try to attempt it. Otherwise we’re…

— Duane Michals

In the West, people tend to look at life as spectators, but in the East, people are the thing.

— Duane Michals

I never went to a photography school, which was my saving grace.

— Duane Michals