Duane Michals Quotes - BrainyQuote

American - Photographer Born: February 18, 1932

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.

You People Face Great

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

Work Good Mind Way

Even in the deepest love relationship - when lovers say 'I love you' to each other - we don't really know what we're saying, because language isn't equal to the complexity of human emotions.

Love Relationship You I Love You

Photography does deal with 'truth' or a kind of superficial reality better than any of the other arts, but it never questions the nature of reality - it simply reproduces reality. And what good is that when the things of real value in life are invisible?

Life Nature Good Truth

I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see.

Imagination Believe Important I Can

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

Nothing Photography Appearances Deals

Photography is very presumptuous. Photographers are always photographing other people's lives - something they know nothing about - and drawing great inferences into it.

People Great Drawing Know

Photographers usually want to photograph facts and things. But I'm interested in the nature of the thing itself. A photograph of someone sleeping tells me nothing about their dream state; a photograph of a corpse tells me nothing about the nature of death. My work is about my life as an event, and I find myself to be very temporal, transient.

Life Nature Work Myself

Trust that little voice in your head that says 'Wouldn't it be interesting if...'; And then do it.

Trust Imagination Voice Your

To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.

Reality Nothing Photograph

Top 10
Duane Michals
Quotes

The majority of photographers focus on the obvious. They believe and accept what their eyes tell them, and yet eyes know nothing.

Eyes Focus Believe Know

To fulfil a fantasy is the quickest way to destroy it.

Way Fantasy Destroy Fulfil

I write in order to express what the photo itself cannot say. A photograph of my father doesn't tell me what I thought of him, which for me is much more important than what the man looked like.

Me Man Father Important

I'm a terrible punster. And I love to rhyme. I just can't help myself.

Love Myself Help Just

Art has to address eternal issues.

Art Eternal Issues Address

I'm very hard on the art world just being a big business.

Art Business World Hard

The question of truth is forever in the air, and people look for it with particular fervor in art.

Art Truth People Look

I still find doing portraits a terrific challenge, but even though I've done hundreds of them, I've never stopped questioning the very nature of portraiture because it deals exclusively with appearances. I've never believed people are what they look like and think it's impossible to really know what people are.

Nature People Look Challenge

Most photographs, to me, are description, but they lack insight.

Me Insight Description Most

I got a lot of flak originally for writing with photographs, because the great cliche in photography is that one photograph is worth a thousand words, and photographers are usually dodo birds anyway.

Great Words Birds Writing

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

Life People Look Thing

I think photographers are too polite. There is not enough anger in photography; it's pretty much trivialized.

Anger Think Enough Photography

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

Life Work Myself My Life

Usually when painters use photographs, they enlarge and copy them and simply make a large, boring painting of a large, boring photograph.

Painting Boring Copy Photograph

I've done a lot of commercial work. I'm the complete photographer.

Work Done Photographer Complete

There are those photographers who have made a whole career doing commercial work but have never had a museum show, and then there are others who've only had museum shows but couldn't survive for five seconds in the real world of photography. But I've done absolutely everything.

Work World Never Doing

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