Electric Pumpkin

I don't post on Saturdays, but just this one little thing.

Duane Michals, Magritte with Hat, 1965

The Lens Blog had a great little article the other day to catch us up with the prolific Duane Michals, a playful and inventive photographer whom time has turned into a somewhat incongruous photographic elder. If anyone should be forever young in our small-u universe it's probably Michals. And Erwitt too, I guess, but I digress.

Anyway the article is worth reading—it's short and sweet and has some great slideshows, although I never took to Michals' pet "Sidney Sherman" joke very well. It always seemed a touch gay-misogynist to me.

René Magritte, Le fils de l'homme [the Son of Man], lithograph, 1967

Best things in the Lens Blog's presentation: "Magritte with Hat," a portrait of the Belgian painter René Magritte, a quintessential surrealist and an early enthusiasm of my youthful art-room-denizen self; I'd never seen it before. (Or, if I've seen it, I never "saw" it.) And this quote:

Along comes this guy and he’s saying he needs the moment before and the moment after.  "That decisive moment is fine, but it doesn’t work for me." He needed to create a sequence.

That's Linda Benedict-Jones speaking, the curator of the Duane Michals show that opens today at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittburgh, Pennsylvania. I like her idea of contrasting sequences (some of Michals' sequences seem like little movies) with H. C.-B.'s iconic (and inevitably overused) idea.

•     •     •

So Halloween yesterday was a bust at my new house, and which was kind of a bummer. For one thing, Xander wasn't home to minister to the decor—our old house somehow got very spooky in Halloween garb, such that little kids were sometimes afraid to approach it. At the new house I just plunked an electric pumpkin out front to signify that we were open for business. Last year, at the old house, I gave away more than 200 full-sized candy bars; this year, at the new house, fewer than 15. (Good thing I saved the receipt and can return the rest.)

However, the holiday was somewhat redeemed when reader John MacKechnie sent me this picture of this great Halloween costume:

But back to Duane Michals...he's one of those photographers who are represented in my library by one carefully-chosen volume. I have The Essential Duane Michals from 1997, which is not a valuable book—it's still available cheaply. The new book—Linda Benedict-Jones's catalogue from the exhibition at the Carnegie Museum—might be a good one to have instead, but I don't know yet as I haven't seen it.

Michals' work, however, is essential to get to know, if you don't already know it. He's one of those later-20th-century photographers who are unique unto themselves, like Jerry Uelsmann or Sheila Metzner. And a nice thing about him is there's always more you haven't seen.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Stan B.: "'Never trust any photograph so large it can only fit inside a museum.' —Duane Michals."

Comments

[scott]

"the quintessential French surrealist painter"

Belgian. In case you care.

Thanks and best regards.

[Peter Meeus]

Dear Mike, as a Belgian, I have to take issue with you calling René Magritte "the quintessential French surrealist painter". He was definitely a Belgian surrealist painter, born in Lessines and most of his life living in Brussels.

Best regards,

Peter

[John Ryan Brubaker]

Just a note to say that Rene Magritte was Belgian, not French. He lived and worked in Brussels for most of his life and is a major contribution to the creative identity of the city to this day.

[Thanks John, Scott, and Peter, fixed now. --Mike]

[Stephen Scharf]

I know you don't post on Saturdays, but in this case, I am glad you did. Great article.

[LeftCoastKenny]

Coming from Flemish heritage I can only say this-

[steven Ralser]

Re Halloween - give it a year or two. Once the kids figure out you give full sized candy bars you won't be able to keep them away. Our son and his friends knew which houses to target for the full sized bars.

[William Schneider]

Love the quote about the decisive moment not being enough for Duane Michals!

As a graduate student at Ohio University a long time ago, I met him when he came to give a presentation.

Grads students were assigned the task of transporting visiting artists to and from the airport in Columbus, OH. I was charged with driving him back.

On the way back to the airport, which was just under 2 hours away, Duane fell asleep in my car. I recall when I made this photo that it fit nicely with the title of his famous book "Sleep and Dream".

He was a very down-to-earth person and easy to talk to.

However the fact that he fell asleep in my car during the drive probably didn't reflect well on my own knack for conversation!

[Kevin Purcell]

Whenever I see a badly dodged person's head in a B&W photo it reminds me of Duane Michals' Christ in New York, 1981

http://www.pacemacgill.com/selected_works/detailspage.php?artist=Duane%20Michals&img_num=17

[Frank]

When I was a young corporate photographer I would do location shoots armed with cases of Dynalite strobes and my arsenal of 35mm, 120, and 4x5 cameras, multiple lenses for each... I had a steady client, a famous crystal glass manufacturer, who loved my work but asked me to sit out one particular day's shoot. Their director of design wanted his new friend to shoot instead. I was heartsick until I asked who it was, then I was impressed.

Duane Michaels shot the entire job with one 35mm SLR with a normal lens. No lights, just a couple rolls of film. Drug store processing. His pictures looked great. He became a huge influence after that.

[Alun J. Carr]

What about Bill Brandt's portrait of Magritte?

http://pictify.com/109593/bill-brandt-rene-magritte

I can't understand why Brandt is so ignored on the western side of the pond these days, when Ansel Adams thought incredibly highly of him.

[latent_image]

For me the treat on Lens Blog was the photo-essay "Seeing Halloween, as if for the First Time" featuring photographs by the hugely talented young photographer Joey L. I think it's the first time I've encountered digital B&W that had tonality and texture that really got me excited.