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.

‘Anna Gaskell is an American art photographer and artist from Des Moines, Iowa. She is best known for her photographic series that she calls “elliptical narratives” which are similar to the works produced by Cindy Sherman.‘

Anna Gaskell (born October 22, 1969) is an American art photographer and artist from Des Moines, Iowa.

Known for her haunting depictions of young women in ambiguous scenes, Anna Gaskell began casting girls—specifically identical twins—to reinterpret scenarios from Alice in Wonderland. As the Serpent is from a series of photographs that shows the girls in close-up, extracted from the bright backgrounds that mark her other photographs related to this theme. Here, we see Gaskell’s model facing forward, yet the work’s title suggests that she is not posed as herself but is rather playing a role, namely the serpent of the image’s title. Discussing her interest in the Alice books, Gaskell suggests a enigmatic connection between their author Charles Dodgson (whose pseudonym was Lewis Carroll) and his inspiration, a young girl named Alice Liddell. Their relationship was “so complicated and mysterious,” Gaskell stated. “We don’t really know anything about it, but we know enough. There is the possibility of child abuse. His longing for her. I like the danger about it—at some point, being unable to explain it. I like the world that she lived in.”

Gaskell focuses on re telling traditional fairy tales and childhood stories through photography often capturing the story’s in a violent and disturbing light, when drawing inspiration from Gaskell I am most interested in her ability to create narratives through still photography and capture the essence of a story.

Book layout

Anna Gaskell does not only use photography to contribute to her story telling she also utilised simple drawings to chapter her images which I intend to imitate in my own work

‘Widely recognized as one of the most important American artists of her generation, Cindy Sherman revolutionized the role of the camera in artistic practice and opened the door for generations of artists and critics to rethink photography as a medium.’

This series of photos created by Cindy Sherman in her exploration of film and caricatures pushed into women in Hollywood.
my interest in these images is not the themes they surround but instead the may they are made utilising projected backgrounds that create a rustic and film like appeal.

I believe using the technique of projecting the background in some of my images will create a sense that the image is just a screenshot from a film, contributing to the story’s I intend to tell throughout my photography.

In 1980 Sherman stopped working on ‘The Untitled Film stills’ and began working in colour with the Rear screen projection series, she continued to create self portraits using only herself as a model and transforming her appearance with many varying wigs, makeup, outfits, leaving the narrative of her scenes deliberately vague.
However instead of using pre existing scenery and lighting she created a manufactured environment for her photography using specific lighting and projected scenery in the controlled environment of the studio.
‘Unlike the Untitled Film Stills, with their artificial narratives set in real locations, this series presents women no longer bound by their physical surroundings.’

Photo analysis

Jersey Legends – Erren Michaels

Jersey Legends- Erren Michaels

+Jersey Legends by Erren Michaels

Urban Legends / folk tales

world wars- propaganda photography

What is the windows and mirrors theory?

“Most of my likeness [daguerreotypes] do look
unamiable; but the very sufficient reason, I fancy,
is because the originals are so. There is a wonderful
insight in heaven’s broad and simple sunshine. While
we give it credit only for depicting the merest surface,
it actually brings out the secret character with a
truth that no painter would ever venture upon, even
if he could detect it.”
(Holgrave in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House o f the Seven Gables, 1851)

we approach the photographs in the show either as mirrors, reflecting the photographer’s consciousness and concerned primarily with self- expression, or windows, openings onto the external world concerned primarily with exploration.

The idea of photographs functioning like windows makes total sense. Like a camera, windows frame our view of the world. We see through them and light enters the window so that we can see beyond. Photographs present us with a view of something. However, it might also be possible to think of photographs as mirrors, reflecting our individual view of the world, one we have shaped with our personalities, our subconscious motivations, so that it represents how our minds work as well as our eyes. The photograph’s surface reflects as much as it frames. Of course, some photographs might be both mirrors and windows.

Windows

a window in photography is an objective view of the world around this could include documentary, realism, candid, optical photography.

With window photography it is difficult to infer much about the photo and requires little to no creativity to create.

this would be considered a window photography because it is an honest, unedited, unfiltered view of the world around.

Mirrors

A Mirror is a reflection of the photographers subconscious and conscious self expression.
“Mirrors” were images meant to mirror the photographer’s own sensibility.

this image is very subjective and clearly the photographer is trying to communicate a deeper message than is objectively presented in the image

Cross-Over

of course in some photos there is cross over between the two contrasting approaches to photography where the photo at first seems objective and could be considered a Window to the outside world but upon deeper inspection the could also be considered Mirror because of the subtle inference and and underlying themes.

when first approaching this image i believe it to be an objective photo taken of perhaps and football pitch, with the chalk lines framing the photo but upon further research i discovered this is a image by Richard Long and is named– A line made by walking, England 1967, this image was created through longs performance after of walking in a line over and over and and killing/treading down the grass bellow his path and then documented through photography. so in fact despite its appearance this image is quite subjective.
I believe it to be a combination of both approaches.

Mood Board

Focus Of Experimentation

I want to experiment with they key elements of a photo form, colour, shape and texture and work with combining those elements in order to create and interesting and stimulating photo zine.

I also what to experiment with mirroring and flipping images to create optical illusions throughout.

Selected Images

Rejected Images

Physical Experimentation

Digital Edits

Additional Archive Material

Edited Archive Photos