APA New York Presents Duane Michals

What does it mean for Duane Michals to make magic using the alchemy of photography?

©Duane Michals

Legendary photographer Duane Michals has been making pictures that tell stories for six decades. His stories, these experiences, question other questions. He has said, "To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.”

So what can anyone photograph in their own backyard? Duane works simply with existing light, the camera on hand. Demystifying the process and inviting everyone to his "photography" party. We at APA are thrilled to have the iconic Duane Michals discuss the alchemy of photography with us!

Duane, at 92, still makes new work every week - in the form of movie shorts (three to five minutes) and PDF mashups of new photos and old photos but, like his books, a sequence of ideas. Ideas such as "Thinking of Thinking" and Death, rebirth, art, desire, relations, and loss. This work can be found in his newsletter, and on Instagram and Facebook.

He starts with an idea and then just creates, publishing every week. See them here on his Vimeo and here on his Instagram.

This event will be held LIVE on ZOOM.

NOTE: July 14 - 17: Duane Michals is doing a 4-day photography workshop in McKeesport, PA where attendees will experience studying and going out photographing with Mr. Michals. This talk will be touching on the photography topics that he will be discussing at length during those four days in McKeesport. You can find more info about that 4-day workshop experience here on the workshop website.

Speaker Bio:

Duane Michals was born in McKeesport, a suburb of Pittsburgh, where he took studio art classes at the Carnegie Institute. He received a BA from the University of Denver and attended Parsons School of Design in New York City.

Michals's photographic career commenced in 1958, when he traveled to Russia with a borrowed camera and made portraits of people on the streets. Over the following decades, he worked as a freelance photographer for magazines including Vogue, Esquire, Mademoiselle, and Life, doing fashion photography and portraits.

In his personal work, Michals experimented with combining text and drawings with his images and began addressing literary and philosophical ideas about death, gender, and sexuality.

He employed staged scenes and worked with multiple exposures, sequences, and in series techniques also used extensively in his portraits. Michals's 1970 Museum of Modern Art exhibition and his book Sequences made him an influential figure for an emerging generation investigating the conceptual and narrative possibilities of photography.

In recent years, he has had solo exhibitions at the International Center of Photography, New York (2005), the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2014), and the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts (2015).

Michals's many books include Homage to Cavafy: Ten Poems by Constantine Cavafy/Ten Photographs by Duane Michals (1978), Eros & Thanatos (1992), and ABC Duane (2014).

Michals was made an Officier in France's Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1993, and he was honored with the International Center of Photography Infinity Award for Art in 1989 and the Foto España International Award in 2001.

He lives and works in New York City.