Duane Michal’s is an American photographer, whose work makes innovative use of photo-sequences, often incorporating text to examine emotion and philosophy.

Michal’s first made significant, creative strides in the field of photography during the 1960s. In an era heavily influenced by photojournalism, Michal’s manipulated the medium to communicate narratives. The sequences, for which he is widely known, appropriate cinema’s frame-by-frame format. Michal’s 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 Michal’s singular musings, which are poetic, tragic, and humorous, often all at once.

Story Telling

‘I’ve always told stories. And it’s all about language and ideas rather than something, some description.’

– Duane Michal’s

Psychical Adaptation of Images

Michal’s (b. 1932) has continually rebelled against and expanded the documentary and fine art traditions. At the onset, he baffled critics who knew not what to say of his work, rejecting the notion of the “decisive movement,” the supremacy of the sensational singular image, and the glorification of the perfect print. As an expressionist, rather than going out into the world to collect impressions of the eye, he looked inward to construct the images of his mind, exploring the unseen themes of life, death, sensuality, and innocence.

How then do you feel about the presentation of your pictures on the internet?

‘It’s okay. I don’t think much about it. I do like the work to unfold. At an exhibit I would stand and read the whole series. But I like the punchline to be something else. On the internet, you see the picture sequentially, you can’t see them all at once, because they’re presented one by one [in a slideshow or on a scroll]. So that works.

For me I enjoy seeing an exhibit, but the book with remain for a long time and that’s important to me. I don’t think about an audience. I’ve always just worked in terms of myself. I don’t really realize there are people out there that see this work. I live very quietly. My tastes and the way I set up my life is really turn-of-the-century. I love books, I like reading, I like poetry. I have nothing to do with contemporary tastes, what’s hot and what’s not hot. I’m in my little time capsule, which is very cosy. It suits me.’

Duane Michal’s

Michal’s interest in narrative and story telling with his photography very much aligns with mine and has inspired me to primarily format my work in a book.

his words have really made me consider captions and written word on my photographs and how I will sequence my images to tell the story’s/ legends I am trying to portray.

next steps

My next steps after reviewing how Michal’s portrays a story through his photography is to story boards and chunk the legends will be working from into recognisable and destiny important areas of the story before I begin photographing.