Duane Michals Quotes & Sayings

“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.”

“I still find doing portraits a terrific challenge, but even though I've done hundreds of them, I've never stopped questioning the very nature of portraiture because it deals exclusively with appearances. I've never believed people are what they look like and think it's impossible to really know what people are.”

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

“All good work has magic in it, and addresses the mind in a subtle way.”

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

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

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

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

“The question of truth is forever in the air, and people look for it with particular fervor in art.”

“People of my generation who became photographers in the late fifties, early sixties, there were no rewards in photography. There were no museum shows. Maybe MOMA would show something, or Chicago. There were no galleries. Nobody bought photographs.”