Duane Michals
Traveling Exhibition:
Fundación Mapfre, Barcelona, Spain, May 30 - September 10, 2017
Centro José Guerrero, Granada, Spain, January 19 – April 1, 2018
Museo Ettore Fico, Torino, Italy, May 16 - July 28, 2018
Antiguo Instituto Jovellanos, Gijón, Spain, October 19, 2018 – January 19, 2019
An artist in balance between photography and poetry, Duane Michals (McKeesport, Pennsylvania, 1932) is one of the most prestigious names of North American avant-garde. In the sixties, he created a new approach to photography, which did not intend to document facts or "truth", but to deal with metaphysical aspects of life. Through very personal work of extraordinary originality, Duane Michals has blurred the line between photography and other disciplines, such as poetry or painting. He has become one of the artists who has renewed photographic language with great intensity over the past sixty years.
In an age marked by photojournalism, he rejected the limitations of this trend, and became closer to cinematic storytelling, by using carefully formed photographic sequences. Likewise, he crossed the limits of the means, by incorporating handwritten texts on his developed copies which add a deeper dimension to his photographs. With uncomplicated technique and lighting, and meticulous set design, his work approaches the major questions of the human being, often through play and irony.
He also uses these elements to construct his portraits, in which he tries to reflect not only the physical aspect of the models, but more their identity and the elements that characterize them best. Whatever the means and the subject addressed, the personality, concerns and the sense of humor of Duane Michals overflow in all his works.