Feature3 DUANE MICHALS Winter2010

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Internationally renowned artist Duane Michals is a consummate storyteller, and Pittsburgh is the root of his storyline. That’s why more than half a century after

leaving for Denver, and eventually New York City, hislongtime home, he returns to the Steel City every chancehe gets—for commercial assignments, for high schoolreunions, for visits to the museum that introduced him toart and is now home to his archive. Among his favorite

haunts: The Café at The Frick in Point Breeze, CityBooks on the South Side, and of course his old stomping grounds in his beloved, albeit now worn, hometownof McKeesport.

The oldest son of Slovak immigrant parents, Michals,now 78, grew up in a three-story brick home on unpavedHigh Street, where his active imagination, which dreamedup adventures in the Big Apple, blossomed. Fellow art star

Andy Warhol thumbed his nose at his Pittsburgh rootsand never looked back, but Michals—who in the 1960sreinvented the role of photographer from spectator toagent of thought and emotion—has always embraced hismodest blue-collar upbringing, relishing its impact on his

work ethic.“I’m a fanatic about Pittsburgh, especially McKeesport,”Michals says from the cozy basement office of his 19th-century brownstone on the east side of Manhattan. “Iguess it was such an important part of my life and I havegood memories. My grandmother told me that if I

worked hard, anything was possible. That if I wantedsomething, to go get it; that nobody was going to give itto me. So that’s what I did.”

Duane Michals, I Think About Thinking , 2000,

The Henry L. Hillman Fund

A true original, McKeesport native Duane Michals literally rewrote the

once long-held rules of photography by taking charge of the viewer’s

experience, and infusing his work with thought, emotion, and humor.

BY JULIE HANNON


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It was in the bookstore of the formerdowntown Kaufmann’s that Michals discov-ered one of his greatest inspirations: Walt

Whitman. At age 17, he forked over fivedollars earned by delivering the PittsburghPost-Gazette to purchase Whitman’s well-known collection of poetry, The Leaves of Grass . Drawn to Whitman’s candor, particu-larly about his close relationships with men,Michals even carried the book into battleduring the Korean War, and still owns thesame edition today.

Like Whitman, Michals is entirelyself-taught. Having never formally studiedphotography, he instead finds inspirationfrom poets and Surrealist painters such asRené Magritte, Balthus, and Giorgio deChirico. He has always gone against thegrain, focusing his camera inward ratherthan outward. In the process, he hasrevolutionized the still photograph.

Casting aside the photographer’s long-

held ritual of capturing the decisivemoment, Michals introduced image

sequences in a cinematic frame-by-frameformat in order to tell a story. He didn’t waitfor things to happen; he staged events forthe camera. He was also the first to writeon photographs.

“Today we think it’s no big deal, but it wassacrilege at the time; truly provocative,” saysLinda Benedict-Jones, curator of photography at Carnegie Museum of Art and caretaker of Michals’ photographic archive, which themuseum has acquired over the last decade.She’s planning a retrospective of his workfor 2014.

“I am an expressionist,” Michals says, “andby that I mean I’m not a photographer or a

writer or a painter or a tap dancer, but rathersomeone who expresses himself according tohis needs.”

Finding bliss

Michals’ interest in art, like that of generationsof Pittsburghers, was cultivated at CarnegieMuseum of Art’s Saturday art classes.

“I had my own interests by then,” saysMichals. “I used to go to the library and look at art books. I always had the instinct for theaesthetic. But until the classes I didn’t yet kno

where to scratch, you know, the aesthetic itch“Going to the museum was very nurturin

The watercolor classes provided a lot oflatitude, a lot of freedom. And where inMcKeesport would I have had the chance tosee such great art? So it was thrilling justbeing inside the museum, especially theHall of Sculpture .”

A full scholarship led him to the Universitof Denver, where he earned a bachelor of artsdegree. After serving in the Army for two yearin Germany during the Korean War, Michalsenrolled in Parsons School of Design in New

York to study graphic design. But after a year, left for a job in publishing. In 1958, at age 26,he was working as a designer in the publicity department of Time Inc. when he decided tobum money from his parents and go on a

three-week adventure to Russia.

Duane Michals, I Remember Pittsburgh, 1982, Greenwald

Photograph Fund and Fine

Arts Discretionary Fund



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With a borrowed Argus 3C camera,Michals ventured behind the Iron Curtainat the height of the Cold War. He wanderedaround Minsk taking portraits of everyday people—a sailor, schoolchildren, even amonkey trainer in a circus. The experiencealtered the course of his life. “I was a natural,”says Michals about photography. “I foundmy bliss.”

Within two years, he was making a living

from commercial work, and in his five-decade-long career, he’s done it all: fashion spreads forVogue , cover shots for LIFE magazine andTime . He even starred in an ad campaign hecreated for the GAP and produced the coverart for The Police’s album Synchronicity . Hebegan exhibiting what he calls his “personal

work” in 1963. When his peers caught a glimpse of one his first sequences, The Spirit Leaves the Body , a seven-frame narrative using multiple exposures to depict a spirit rising from a dead man, they discounted him, calling him a flash in the pan. But the art world

almost immediately embraced him. Today, hisphotographs belong to museums around the world, from Jerusalem to Kyoto, Japan.

Unlike the photographic greats who camebefore him—Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Robert Frank—Michals hasnever been interested in how things look, butrather how they make you feel. “It’s the differ-

ence between reading a hundred love stories,”he explains, “and actually falling in love.”

He never walks around with a camera looking for something to photograph.Blurring the lines between photography andphilosophy, Michals is curious and a deepthinker. Most of the themes he tackles—theuniverse, life after death, desire, dreams, loss—require some serious soul-searching, on hispart and the viewer’s.

“It’s not the shooting—shooting is the easi-est part,” he explains. “For me, it’s what do Icare about, what makes me angry, what scares

me? Figuring that out and being moved tosomehow find a way of illustrating it.

“Photographing tears as a way to show sadness just never did it for me,” he adds. “Itdoesn’t tell you, doesn’t make you feel, any-thing real.”

Creating the visual riddleOne of Michals’ photographs with text from1976, Certain Words Must Be Said , could eas-ily be interpreted as a crisis of feelingsbetween two women, possibly lovers. But it’sonly through the handwritten text that wesense the root of their tension: Things had become impossible between them and nothing could be salvaged. Certain words must be said. And although each one had said those words silently to herself a hundred times, neither had the courage to say them out loud to one another.So they began to hope someone else might say

the necessary words for them. Perhaps a letter might arrive or a telegram delivered that would

say what they could not. Now they spent theirdays waiting. What else could they do?

“It’s about a kind of intimacy and privacand whispers,” Michals offers. “What I wanis the part of you that you’re embarrassed

about. That part of you that you don’t wanto tell anybody out loud.”

It works, at least in part, because Michahimself is vulnerable in his work. He oftencasts himself as a character, exposing notonly his body but his personal stake in dis-cussions of attraction, aging, desire, love,and mortality.

“I don’t trust reality,” says Michals. “So of the writing on and painting on the pho-tographs is born out of the frustration toexpress what you do not see.”

“I am an expressionist, and by that I mean I’m not a photographer or a writer or a painter or

a tap dancer, but rather someone who expresses himself according to his needs.” - DUANE MICHA

P H O T O : J O S H U A

F R A N Z O S

Duane Michals, Things are Queer, 1993, Director's Discretionary F

At 14, Duane Michals scratched his “aesthetic itch” during Saturday art classes at Carnegie Museum A

Here he’s pictured in the museum’sHall of Architecture, often the site of the museum’s art classes.



Many of the artist’s strongest works,Things Are Queer among them, force viewersto peel away layers of a story, much like you

would in a captivating novel. Benedict-Jones, who was 23 and living in Portugal at the timeThings Are Queer was published, invested a lotof time and effort doing just that.

“I was completely spellbound. I couldn’tput it down,” she says about the nine-image

sequence that features, simply put, a bath-room and an evolving perspective. “I didn’tknow how he did it. I had to puzzle it. It was a visual riddle to solve. I was impressed by the

work of all the great photographers of thattime—Diane Arbus, W. Eugene Smith,Brassaï—but none grabbed me in the same

way. None engaged me in the way DuaneMichals did.”

Never one to hide who he is, how he feels,or what he thinks, Michals has never shiedaway from controversy. Gay themes havealways been a central part of his work; but he’salways refused to treat his personal identity asseparate from the shared human condition,making his work accessible to a wide audience.

That’s not to say that his work isn’t politi-cally charged. In one of Michals’ most recog-nizable images, Salvation, a priest holds a cruci-fix like a gun against a young man’s head.Published in The New York Times as part of a 1980s series that asked artists to show or write

what they thought about conditions in America, Michals’ photograph was accompa-nied by text that read: No American has the right to impose his morality on another American.

The following day, his mom, a lifelong Catholic, called to tell him, “The priest talkedabout you in his sermon this morning.”

Michals also has a sharp wit, and he’s notafraid to wield it. In his book Foto Follies:How Photography Lost its Virginity on the Way to the Bank , he pokes fun at the current state

of contemporary photography and theoverblown art market. Using over-the-top andpenetrating picture-stories, he takes aim at thelikes of some of today’s hottest art stars, including Cindy Sherman, Thomas Ruff, SherrieLevine, and Andres Serrano.

“They’ve lowered the bar on photography,says Michals. “The only thing that’s happene

with photography since black-and-whitekicked the bucket in my generation is that

photographs have become larger and outra-geously expensive.”

Home, sweet andcomplicated home

Michals’ family life, particularly his “non-rela-tionship” with his steelworker father, informsmuch of his work. It was shortly after hisfather died that Michals started writing andpainting on his images. “The floodgate justopened,” he recalls. “Suddenly I could expandmy expression.”

Admittedly, Michals’ work has become

even more intimate as he’s aged. In 2003, afterpublishing two dozen books, he returned toMcKeesport to produce his most personal pro

ject yet, The House I Once Called Home: APhotographic Memoir With Verse. He had justturned 70, and the journey back to the house

where he was born and raised, now dilapidateand empty, was a powerful one. In Duanelandan upbeat documentary starring McKeesportas much as Michals, the artist retraces hissteps, explaining how he superimposed new



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photographs onto much older images taken inthe same location during his childhood. Theresulting work suggests the ghostly presence of the long gone, producing a layering of time andemotion that is at the heart of Michals’ art.

“The house had grown old with me,” he says,“and it was my vehicle to deal with my history and my family.”

This past fall, he wrapped up his latestbook project, The Lieutenant Who Loved His

Platoon, a memoir about being gay in the mili-tary. At 21, Michals had gone into the Army right out of college.

“I had never seen a tank in my life, so I got a commission to quartermaster [providing quarters,rations, and clothing to his battalion],” he recalls.“Everybody has something, their hardestmoment—maybe you get divorced or whatever itis—but we all have something, and that’s what Imeasure rotten against. That was rotten.”

How does he feel about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?“It’s not really an issue anymore because when allthe old fogies die, young people don’t care about

it. It’s becoming a non-issue.”Michals has always used the most basic photo-graphic techniques—double exposure, sand-

wiched negatives, and superimposed images—toexplore big ideas. He’s never learned how to usestrobe lighting, choosing instead to make imagesusing only natural light.

He’s also never owned a studio, preferring to work in the basement office of the home he’sshared with his partner of 50 years, Frederick.Their basement laundry room doubles as hisshowing room—“It has the best light in thehouse!” Michals exclaims.

While his home is filled with art, the work

of only one photographer is on display: AndréKertész, a Hungarian-born image-maker who also

worked in black-and-white and is best-known forhis candid moments and compositional genius

with what was then the new 35mm camera.“I don’t really collect photographs,” says

Michals, “but I knew Kertész. I photographedhim, he lived around the corner from me, andI’ve always had a strong affinity for his work.It’s beautiful.”

While Michals doesn’t teach, he’s incredibly generous with his time and enthusiasm for themedium. He recently took the stage in Pittsburgh

with Lynn Zelevansky, The Henry J. Heinz IIDirector of Carnegie Museum of Art, sharing memories of his longstanding relationship withthe museum, as only Michals can—with afrankness and humor that left the audience

wanting more.“Pittsburgh is important to Duane Michals,”

says Benedict-Jones, “and Duane Michals isimportant to Pittsburgh.”

Above: Duane Michals, A Letter from My Father , 1960-1975,

The Henry L. Hillman Fund

Below: Duane Michals, The Unfortunate Man, 1976, The Henry L. Hillman Fund

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Feature3 DUANE MICHALS Winter2010