A true original, McKeesport native Duane Michals literally rewrote the

once long-held rules of photography by taking charge of the viewers

experience, and infusing his work with thought, emotion, and humor.
BY JULIE HANNON

nternationally renowned artist Duane Michals is a

consummate storyteller, and Pittsburgh is the root of
his storyline. Thats why more than half a century after
leaving for Denver, and eventually New York City, his
longtime home, he returns to the Steel City every chance
he getsfor commercial assignments, for high school
reunions, for visits to the museum that introduced him to
art and is now home to his archive. Among his favorite
haunts: The Caf at The Frick in Point Breeze, City
Books on the South Side, and of course his old stomping
grounds in his beloved, albeit now worn, hometown
of McKeesport.
The oldest son of Slovak immigrant parents, Michals,
now 78, grew up in a three-story brick home on unpaved
High Street, where his active imagination, which dreamed
up adventures in the Big Apple, blossomed. Fellow art star
Andy Warhol thumbed his nose at his Pittsburgh roots
and never looked back, but Michalswho in the 1960s
reinvented the role of photographer from spectator to
agent of thought and emotionhas always embraced his
modest blue-collar upbringing, relishing its impact on his
work ethic.
Im a fanatic about Pittsburgh, especially McKeesport,
Michals says from the cozy basement office of his 19thcentury brownstone on the east side of Manhattan. I
guess it was such an important part of my life and I have
good memories. My grandmother told me that if I
worked hard, anything was possible. That if I wanted
something, to go get it; that nobody was going to give it
to me. So thats what I did.
(continued)
Duane Michals, I Think About Thinking, 2000,
The Henry L. Hillman Fund

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Duane Michals, I Remember

Pittsburgh, 1982, Greenwald
Photograph Fund and Fine
Arts Discretionary Fund

It was in the bookstore of the former

downtown Kaufmanns that Michals discovered one of his greatest inspirations: Walt
Whitman. At age 17, he forked over five
dollars earned by delivering the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette to purchase Whitmans wellknown collection of poetry, The Leaves of
Grass. Drawn to Whitmans candor, particularly about his close relationships with men,
Michals even carried the book into battle
during the Korean War, and still owns the
same edition today.
Like Whitman, Michals is entirely
self-taught. Having never formally studied
photography, he instead finds inspiration
from poets and Surrealist painters such as
Ren Magritte, Balthus, and Giorgio de
Chirico. He has always gone against the
grain, focusing his camera inward rather
than outward. In the process, he has
revolutionized the still photograph.
Casting aside the photographers longheld ritual of capturing the decisive
moment, Michals introduced image

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sequences in a cinematic frame-by-frame

format in order to tell a story. He didnt wait
for things to happen; he staged events for
the camera. He was also the first to write
on photographs.
Today we think its no big deal, but it was
sacrilege at the time; truly provocative, says
Linda Benedict-Jones, curator of photography
at Carnegie Museum of Art and caretaker of
Michals photographic archive, which the
museum has acquired over the last decade.
Shes planning a retrospective of his work
for 2014.
I am an expressionist, Michals says, and
by that I mean Im not a photographer or a
writer or a painter or a tap dancer, but rather
someone who expresses himself according to
his needs.

Finding bliss
Michals interest in art, like that of generations
of Pittsburghers, was cultivated at Carnegie
Museum of Arts Saturday art classes.

I had my own interests by then, says

Michals. I used to go to the library and look
at art books. I always had the instinct for the
aesthetic. But until the classes I didnt yet know
where to scratch, you know, the aesthetic itch.
Going to the museum was very nurturing.
The watercolor classes provided a lot of
latitude, a lot of freedom. And where in
McKeesport would I have had the chance to
see such great art? So it was thrilling just
being inside the museum, especially the
Hall of Sculpture.
A full scholarship led him to the University
of Denver, where he earned a bachelor of arts
degree. After serving in the Army for two years
in Germany during the Korean War, Michals
enrolled in Parsons School of Design in New
York to study graphic design. But after a year, he
left for a job in publishing. In 1958, at age 26,
he was working as a designer in the publicity
department of Time Inc. when he decided to
bum money from his parents and go on a
three-week adventure to Russia.

PHOTO: JOSHUA FRANZOS

With a borrowed Argus 3C camera,

Michals ventured behind the Iron Curtain
at the height of the Cold War. He wandered
around Minsk taking portraits of everyday
peoplea sailor, schoolchildren, even a
monkey trainer in a circus. The experience
altered the course of his life. I was a natural,
says Michals about photography. I found
my bliss.
Within two years, he was making a living
from commercial work, and in his five-decadelong career, hes done it all: fashion spreads for
Vogue, cover shots for LIFE magazine and
Time. He even starred in an ad campaign he
created for the GAP and produced the cover
art for The Polices album Synchronicity. He
began exhibiting what he calls his personal
work in 1963. When his peers caught a
glimpse of one his first sequences, The Spirit
Leaves the Body, a seven-frame narrative using
multiple exposures to depict a spirit rising
from a dead man, they discounted him, calling
him a flash in the pan. But the art world
almost immediately embraced him. Today, his
photographs belong to museums around the
world, from Jerusalem to Kyoto, Japan.

At 14, Duane Michals scratched his aesthetic itch during Saturday art classes at Carnegie Museum Art.
Here hes pictured in the museums Hall of Architecture, often the site of the museums art classes.

I am an expressionist, and by that I mean Im not a photographer or a writer or a painter or

a tap dancer, but rather someone who expresses himself according to his needs. - DUANE MICHALS
Unlike the photographic greats who came
before himAnsel Adams, Henri CartierBresson, and Robert FrankMichals has
never been interested in how things look, but
rather how they make you feel. Its the difference between reading a hundred love stories,
he explains, and actually falling in love.
He never walks around with a camera
looking for something to photograph.
Blurring the lines between photography and
philosophy, Michals is curious and a deep
thinker. Most of the themes he tacklesthe
universe, life after death, desire, dreams, loss
require some serious soul-searching, on his
part and the viewers.
Its not the shootingshooting is the easiest part, he explains. For me, its what do I
care about, what makes me angry, what scares
me? Figuring that out and being moved to
somehow find a way of illustrating it.

Photographing tears as a way to show

sadness just never did it for me, he adds. It
doesnt tell you, doesnt make you feel, anything real.

Creating the visual riddle

One of Michals photographs with text from
1976, Certain Words Must Be Said, could easily be interpreted as a crisis of feelings
between two women, possibly lovers. But its
only through the handwritten text that we
sense the root of their tension: Things had
become impossible between them and nothing
could be salvaged. Certain words must be said.
And although each one had said those words
silently to herself a hundred times, neither had
the courage to say them out loud to one another.
So they began to hope someone else might say
the necessary words for them. Perhaps a letter
might arrive or a telegram delivered that would

say what they could not. Now they spent their

days waiting. What else could they do?
Its about a kind of intimacy and privacy
and whispers, Michals offers. What I want
is the part of you that youre embarrassed
about. That part of you that you dont want
to tell anybody out loud.
It works, at least in part, because Michals
himself is vulnerable in his work. He often
casts himself as a character, exposing not
only his body but his personal stake in discussions of attraction, aging, desire, love,
and mortality.
I dont trust reality, says Michals. So all
of the writing on and painting on the photographs is born out of the frustration to
express what you do not see.
(continued)

Duane Michals, Things are Queer, 1993, Director's Discretionary Fund

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of contemporary photography and the

overblown art market. Using over-the-top and
penetrating picture-stories, he takes aim at the
likes of some of todays hottest art stars, including Cindy Sherman, Thomas Ruff, Sherrie
Levine, and Andres Serrano.
Theyve lowered the bar on photography,
says Michals. The only thing thats happened
with photography since black-and-white
kicked the bucket in my generation is that
photographs have become larger and outrageously expensive.

Home, sweet and

complicated home

Many of the artists strongest works,

Things Are Queer among them, force viewers
to peel away layers of a story, much like you
would in a captivating novel. Benedict-Jones,
who was 23 and living in Portugal at the time
Things Are Queer was published, invested a lot
of time and effort doing just that.
I was completely spellbound. I couldnt
put it down, she says about the nine-image
sequence that features, simply put, a bathroom and an evolving perspective. I didnt
know how he did it. I had to puzzle it. It was a
visual riddle to solve. I was impressed by the
work of all the great photographers of that
timeDiane Arbus, W. Eugene Smith,
Brassabut none grabbed me in the same
way. None engaged me in the way Duane
Michals did.
Never one to hide who he is, how he feels,
or what he thinks, Michals has never shied
away from controversy. Gay themes have
always been a central part of his work; but hes
always refused to treat his personal identity as
separate from the shared human condition,
making his work accessible to a wide audience.
Thats not to say that his work isnt politically charged. In one of Michals most recognizable images, Salvation, a priest holds a crucifix like a gun against a young mans head.
Published in The New York Times as part of a
1980s series that asked artists to show or write
what they thought about conditions in
America, Michals photograph was accompanied by text that read: No American has the
right to impose his morality on another American.

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The following day, his mom, a lifelong

Catholic, called to tell him, The priest talked
about you in his sermon this morning.
Michals also has a sharp wit, and hes not
afraid to wield it. In his book Foto Follies:
How Photography Lost its Virginity on the Way
to the Bank, he pokes fun at the current state

Michals family life, particularly his non-relationship with his steelworker father, informs
much of his work. It was shortly after his
father died that Michals started writing and
painting on his images. The floodgate just
opened, he recalls. Suddenly I could expand
my expression.
Admittedly, Michals work has become
even more intimate as hes aged. In 2003, after
publishing two dozen books, he returned to
McKeesport to produce his most personal project yet, The House I Once Called Home: A
Photographic Memoir With Verse. He had just
turned 70, and the journey back to the house
where he was born and raised, now dilapidated
and empty, was a powerful one. In Duaneland,
an upbeat documentary starring McKeesport
as much as Michals, the artist retraces his
steps, explaining how he superimposed new

photographs onto much older images taken in

the same location during his childhood. The
resulting work suggests the ghostly presence of
the long gone, producing a layering of time and
emotion that is at the heart of Michals art.
The house had grown old with me, he says,
and it was my vehicle to deal with my history
and my family.
This past fall, he wrapped up his latest
book project, The Lieutenant Who Loved His
Platoon, a memoir about being gay in the military. At 21, Michals had gone into the Army
right out of college.
I had never seen a tank in my life, so I got a
commission to quartermaster [providing quarters,
rations, and clothing to his battalion], he recalls.
Everybody has something, their hardest
momentmaybe you get divorced or whatever it
isbut we all have something, and thats what I
measure rotten against. That was rotten.
How does he feel about Dont Ask, Dont Tell?
Its not really an issue anymore because when all
the old fogies die, young people dont care about
it. Its becoming a non-issue.
Michals has always used the most basic photographic techniquesdouble exposure, sandwiched negatives, and superimposed imagesto
explore big ideas. Hes never learned how to use
strobe lighting, choosing instead to make images
using only natural light.
Hes also never owned a studio, preferring to
work in the basement office of the home hes
shared with his partner of 50 years, Frederick.
Their basement laundry room doubles as his
showing roomIt has the best light in the
house! Michals exclaims.
While his home is filled with art, the work
of only one photographer is on display: Andr
Kertsz, a Hungarian-born image-maker who also
worked in black-and-white and is best-known for
his candid moments and compositional genius
with what was then the new 35mm camera.
I dont really collect photographs, says
Michals, but I knew Kertsz. I photographed
him, he lived around the corner from me, and
Ive always had a strong affinity for his work.
Its beautiful.
While Michals doesnt teach, hes incredibly
generous with his time and enthusiasm for the
medium. He recently took the stage in Pittsburgh
with Lynn Zelevansky, The Henry J. Heinz II
Director of Carnegie Museum of Art, sharing
memories of his longstanding relationship with
the museum, as only Michals canwith a
frankness and humor that left the audience
wanting more.
Pittsburgh is important to Duane Michals,
says Benedict-Jones, and Duane Michals is
important to Pittsburgh.
Above: Duane Michals, A Letter from My Father, 1960-1975,
The Henry L. Hillman Fund
Below: Duane Michals, The Unfortunate Man, 1976, The Henry L. Hillman Fund
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