And in not learning the rules, I was free. I always say, you're either defined by the medium or you redefine the medium in terms of your needs. Duane Michals More Quotes by Duane Michals More Quotes From Duane Michals We live in a culture where the one who shouts the loudest gets the most attention. It's not in the vulgar, it's not in the shock that one finds art. And it's not the excessively beautiful. It's in between; it's in nuance. Duane Michals beautiful culture art In the West, people tend to look at life as spectators, but in the East, people are the thing. Duane Michals east people looks The majority of photographers focus on the obvious. They believe and accept what their eyes tell them, and yet eyes know nothing. Duane Michals focus eye believe I never photograph sunsets and I never photograph moonrises. I'm not interested in what things look like. Duane Michals sunset photograph looks Art is not fashionable. That's why fashion and art are two different things. Fashion can never be art because fashion deals with whim, what is temporary, what changes, what is transient, what is now and not now. Art has to deal with issues that are timeless, that never change. Duane Michals fashion two art My work is about my life as an event, and I find myself to be very temporal, transient. Duane Michals transient events All good work has magic in it, and addresses the mind in a subtle way. Duane Michals addresses magic mind I never went to a photography school, which was my saving grace. Duane Michals photography grace school If you look at a photograph, and you think, 'My isn't that a beautiful photograph,' and you go on to the next one, or 'Isn't that nice light?' so what? I mean what does it do to you or what's the real value in the long run? What do you walk away from it with? I mean, I'd much rather show you a photograph that makes demands on you, that you might become involved in on your own terms or be perplexed by. Duane Michals real running beautiful You can’t teach art, so ART SCHOOL is a contradiction in terms. Duane Michals contradiction art school I already know what things look like - I don't want description. People believe in appearances, and I don't believe in appearances at all. Duane Michals believe people looks I don't get straight people, but I understand what they look like. Duane Michals people looks You can never capture a person in picture, never. You might get an interesting expression or gesture. I almost never research a picture subject ahead of time. I think Karsh is full of baloney. Can you imagine spending a whole week out in La Jolla with Jonas Salk soaking up his ambiance, then wind up making him look as if he's in the studio in Ottawa with his thumb under his chin? Duane Michals expression wind thinking One of the marvelous things about film is that if you expose it long enough you're going to get a picture. Duane Michals film enough long I believe in the invisible. I do not believe in the definitive reality of things around us. For me, reality is the intuition and the imagination and the quiet voice inside my head that says: isn't that extraordinary? The things in our lives are the shadows of reality, just as we ourselves are shadows. Duane Michals quiet-voice believe reality I am interested in the nature of things. The nature of something is quite different from the way it looks. Duane Michals different looks way Usually when painters use photographs, they enlarge and copy them and simply make a large, boring painting of a large, boring photograph. Duane Michals painting boring use Art has to address eternal issues. Duane Michals addresses issues art To photograph reality is to photograph nothing. Duane Michals photograph reality Flowers construct the most charming geometries: circles like the sun, ovals, cones, curlicues and a variety of triangular eccentricities, which when viewed with the eye of a magnifying glass seem a Lilliputian frieze of psychedelic silhouettes. Duane Michals circles flower eye
