Quotes from Duane Michals

Photography does deal with 'truth' or a kind of superficial reality better than any of the other arts, but it never questions the nature of reality - it simply reproduces reality. And what good is that when the things of real value in life are invisible?

To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.

I've done a lot of commercial work. I'm the complete photographer.

The majority of photographers focus on the obvious. They believe and accept what their eyes tell them, and yet eyes know nothing.

A lot of photographers walk around looking for something 'out there,' but I'm very much interested in what's 'in here.'

Most photographs, to me, are description, but they lack insight.

Usually when painters use photographs, they enlarge and copy them and simply make a large, boring painting of a large, boring photograph.

You can't see fear or lust; you can't photograph someone's anxieties, how disappointment feels. Photographs are approximations.

Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be.

I write in order to express what the photo itself cannot say. A photograph of my father doesn't tell me what I thought of him, which for me is much more important than what the man looked like.

Photographers tend not to photograph what they can't see, which is the very reason one should try to attempt it. Otherwise we're going to go on forever just photographing more faces and more rooms and more places. Photography has to transcend description. It has to go beyond description to bring insight into the subject, or reveal the subject, not as it looks, but how does it feel?

Photography is essentially an act of recognition by street photographers, not an act of invention. Photographers might respond to an old man's face, or an Arbus freak, or the way light hits a building—and then they move on. Whereas in all the other art forms, take William Blake, everything that came to that paper never existed before. It's the idea of alchemy, of making something from nothing.

A photograph of a woman crying tells me nothing about grief. Or a photograph of a woman ecstatic tells me nothing about ecstasy. What is the nature of these emotions? The problem with photography is that it only deals with appearances.

I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see

We have a way of making the most extraordinary experience ordinary. We actually work at destroying our miracles. ...

I think photographs should be provocative and not tell you what you already know. It takes no great powers or magic to reproduce somebody's face in a photograph. The magic is in seeing people in new ways.

Even in the deepest love relationship - when lovers say 'I love you' to each other - we don't really know what we're saying, because language isn't equal to the complexity of human emotions.

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.

Photography is very presumptuous. Photographers are always photographing other people's lives - something they know nothing about - and drawing great inferences into it.

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.

Trust that little voice in your head that says "Wouldn't it be interesting if..." And then do it.

Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be.

In the West, people tend to look at life as spectators, but in the East, people are the thing.

To fulfil a fantasy is the quickest way to destroy it.