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Photographs with Text

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A Letter From My Father, 1975

A Letter From My Father, 1975
Gelatin silver print with hand-applied text
5 x 7 1/2 inches 

The Illuminated Man

The Illuminated Man
1968
Gelatin silver print with hand-applied text
6 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches 

Duane Michals The Most Beautiful Part of a Man's Body, 1986 Gelatin silver print with hand-applied text 4 3/4 x 7 1/4 inches (image); 11 x 13 7/8 inches (paper) Edition AP I/V

The Most Beautiful Part of a Man's Body, 1986
Gelatin silver print with hand-applied text
4 3/4 x 7 1/4 inches (image); 11 x 13 7/8 inches (paper)
Edition AP I/V

The Most Beautiful Part of a Woman's Body, 1986 Gelatin silver print with hand-applied text 4 5/8 x 6 7/8 inches (image); 11 x 13 7/8 inches (paper) Edition AP I/V

The Most Beautiful Part of a Woman's Body, 1986
Gelatin silver print with hand-applied text
4 5/8 x 6 7/8 inches (image); 11 x 13 7/8 inches (paper)
Edition AP I/V

The Nature of Desire, 1986

The Nature of Desire, 1986
Gelatin silver print with hand-applied text
11 x 13 7/8 inches
Edition of 25

Duane Michals, The Camera's Caress, 1986. Gelatin silver print with hand-applied text, 5 x 7 1/2 inches (image); 11 x 14 inches (paper) Edition 1/25

Duane Michals
The Camera's Caress, 1986
Gelatin silver print with hand-applied text
5 x 7 1/2 inches (image); 11 x 14 inches (paper)
Edition 1/25

Ah Dreams, 1984 Gelatin silver print with hand-applied text

Ah Dreams, 1984
Gelatin silver print with hand-applied text
14 x 11 inches 

Biography

Duane Michals - Artists - DC Moore Gallery

Image Courtesy of Katvan Studios

Duane Michals (b. 1932, McKeesport, PA) is one of the great photographic innovators of the last century, widely known for his work with series, multiple exposures, and text.

Michals first made significant, creative strides in the field of photography during the 1960s. In an era heavily influenced by photojournalism, Michals manipulated the medium to communicate narratives. The sequences, for which he is widely known, appropriate cinema’s frame-by-frame format. Michals has also incorporated text as a key component in his works. Rather than serving a didactic or explanatory function, his handwritten text adds another dimension to the images’ meaning and gives voice to Michals’ singular musings, which are poetic, tragic, and humorous, often all at once.

Over the past five decades, Michals’ work has been exhibited in the United States and abroad. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, hosted Michals’ first solo exhibition (1970). In 2019, The Morgan Library and Museum in New York exhibited a career retrospective of Michals' work The Illusions of the Photographer: Duane Michals at the Morgan. More recently, he had one-person shows at the Odakyu Museum, Tokyo (1999), and at the International Center of Photography, New York (2005). In 2008, Michals celebrated his 50th anniversary as a photographer with a retrospective exhibition at the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, Greece, and the Scavi Scaligeri in Verona, Italy.

In recognition of his contributions to photography, Michals has been honored with a CAPS Grant (1975), a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1976), the International Center of Photography Infinity Award for Art (1989), the Foto España International Award (2001), and an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, Mass. (2005).

Michals's work belongs to numerous permanent collections in the U.S. and abroad, including the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Michals's archive is housed at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.

Monographs of Michals' work include Homage to Cavafy (1978); Nature of Desire (1989); Duane Michals: Now Becoming Then (1990); Salute, Walt Whitman (1996); The Essential Duane Michals (1997); Questions Without Answers (2001); The House I Once Called Home (2003) Foto Follies / How Photography Lost Its Virginity on the Way to the Bank (2006); 50 (Admira Photography, June 2008); a collection of Michals’s writing (Delpire Editeur, Fall 2008); and his Japanese-inspired, color photographs (Steidl, Fall 2008).

Michals received a BA from the University of Denver in 1953 and worked as a graphic designer until his involvement with photography deepened in the late 1950s. He currently lives and works in New York City.

Video

Preview Talking Pictures: Twelve Mini Movies by Duane Michals

Gallery Talk with Duane Michals

March 7, 2015 at DC Moore Gallery

Duane Michals with Cay Sophie Rabinowitz

April 18, 2013 at DC Moore Gallery

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