Duane Michals Photograph Quotations

Photographers usually want to photograph facts and things. But I'm interested in the nature of the thing itself. A photograph of someone sleeping tells me nothing about their dream state; a photograph of a corpse tells me nothing about the nature of death. My work is about my life as an event, and I find myself to be very temporal, transient.

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

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

To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.

I often try to photograph things about a person that are not visible.

I never photograph sunsets and I never photograph moonrises. I'm not interested in what things look like.

Taking the photograph is the easiest part for me