wasn’t the most celebrated actress in the world. But when photographer Duane Michals shot her in 1975 in New York’s theatre district, she was entirely unknown, a recent graduate from Yale School of Drama who hadn’t yet made a film.
“The picture was taken before she was famous,” Michals remembers. “I had simply been told she was super talented and big things were in the wings. We went up town and ran around the Marquis theatre and had a lot of fun. I asked her to dance and she was as joyful as she seems in the photograph, just radiant.”In contrast, by the 1970s Duane Michals was already well established as one of New York’s most interesting portrait photographers.
Today, at 85, he is busily making movies. “We’ve made 18 of them over the last two years. Recently I madeabout Trump and Putin’s first date, starring a Putin lookalike and me in a wig playing Trump.” He pauses to think. “I’m nearly 86, I’d like to make it to 90 just as long as I get to see Donald Trump kicked out.”
This levity points to the other key to Michals’ success. “Having a sense of humour is essential. I hate artists who take themselves seriously. I’d rather tell a bad joke than anything.” And it is humour that shines through in his shots of Stephen King, draped in a Maine cobweb, or his hero Magritte, his back to the camera in the iconic bowler hat.
The publication of this latest book means he is repeatedly asked what photography means to Duane Michals, and what he looks for in his own work. It’s a question he answers with steely resolve. “I don’t think photographers should tell you what you already know. I know what trees look like, and tits, and cars. They should tell me what I don’t know, but of course they don’t. So my value to anyone is to contradict them and surprise them. I like surprise.
RCA_Digital Big fan of Duane Michals but that is a seriously banal article!