Duane Michals Bücher

Sollte man die Top Five der innovativsten, künstlerisch arbeitenden Fotografen der 2. Hälfte unseres Jahrhunderts aufstellen, der Amerikaner Michals müßte wohl dabei sein. Seit den 60ern steht sein Name für neue Wege in der Kunstfotografie, nicht selten war er der Buhmann, der Tabus brach und ganz und gar selbstbewußt seinen Weg ging. Insbesondere seine Serienarbeiten, seine Porträts und die Verwendung von handschriftlichen Texten machen aus ihm schon zu Lebzeiten einen Klassiker. Bei Twin Palms (vertrieben hierzulande von der Edition Stemmle) sind 3 speziellere Titel von ihm lieferbar, der hier angezeigte ist die einzige Werkübersicht. Mit dem Mut zur Lücke hat der Herausgeber die wichtigsten Arbeiten zusammengetragen und nicht chronologisch, sondern nach thematischen Aspekten präsentiert (das wird nicht jeder mögen). Kurze Essays geben Hintergrundinfos zu diesen Segmenten, der Anhang mit Bibliographie, Zeittafel usw. läßt keine Wünsche offen. (3) (Klaus-Peter Preußger)

Presents the artist/photographer's late intimations on mortality, on last questions before one's final departure. Duane Michals has pioneered and mastered the narrative possibilities of his art while continuing to raise disturbing questions and presenting some of the most emotionally resonant and erotically charged imagery of our time.

In our fourth book of Duane Michals's work, the artist explores classic themes of love and death through photographs and words. The evocative images and poems collected in Eros & Thanatos conjure memories of love and loss, lust and longing, in what is perhaps the most revealing and overtly sensual of Michals's works to date. The full richness of Michals's imagery emerges from these exquisite, large-format sheet-fed gravures.

Intimate themes of life and art are explored in this scrapbook memoir by a legendary photographer, showcasing his iconic works, including portraits of Magritte and Warhol. The book features painted tintypes and innovative multiple-image sequences alongside handwritten texts. It also includes pieces from his personal art collection, which have been donated to the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, offering a unique glimpse into his creative journey and artistic legacy.

“The announced demise of the decisive moment is premature.” Duane Michals Duane Michals’s Foto Follies takes a satirical and humorous look at contemporary photography, art criticism and the state of today’s art market. Whether parodying Wolfgang Tillmans or Thomas Ruff, Andres Serrano, Sherrie Levine, or Cindy Sherman, Michals uses his ferocious wit, keen intelligence and great pictorial skill to create pictures that are both humorous and penetrating, while taking aim at the pretensions that are often perceived as deliberately obscuring contemporary art. Michals provides us with a grand parody that exemplifies his mastery of the visual world and the written word.

Appearing in 1970, Duane Michals’ Sequences became one of the key photography books of the decade. Michals’ concise narratives, typically composed of six or seven uncaptioned images, were surreal, provocative, mysterious—and sometimes flat-out funny. They fueled a radically new direction for a generation of artists exploring the fictional potential of photography. Critic Jed Perl, reviewing a traveling retrospective organized by Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museums in 2014, called the sequences of small, black-and-white images “freshly minted fairy tales for adults. These surreal visual fables were shown at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970, when the museum was the arbiter of all things photographic. […] With [his] cosmic-comic sequences, Michals became photography’s genial troublemaker, seen by some as thumbing his nose at the lyric realism of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s ‘decisive moment’ and Alfred Stieglitz’s perfect prints. What can all too easily be underestimated is the quick, agile intelligence that Michals brought to his troublemaking. That’s what has given his dissident spirit its staying power.” Spanning half a century, Things are Queer. 50 Years of Sequences brings together a generous selection of Michals’ sequences, including many that have never before been published.