Michals, Duane

American b. 1932

BiographyDuane Michals has a long and accomplished history of transgressing photography’s norms–he has painted over, written on, and arranged photographs into highly personal stories. Evoking the passage of time, Michals’s sequenced imagery, such as Gilles, presents arrested moments in time, an interrupted continuity. These tableaus of text and image make real the invisible reality of relationships, emotions, and fantasies. Michals has also successfully applied his distinctive style to the very public realm of commercial photography.

Duane Michals was born in 1932 in Pennsylvania. He received a BA from the University of Denver in 1953, and since 1958 has worked as a freelance photographer. Michals has worked extensively as a commercial photographer; as an artist he is perhaps best known for his sequenced black-and-white images. Michals’ work is included in numerous international collections; exhibition venues include The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; White Columns, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.