Duane Michals

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

“Art has to address eternal issues.”

“The majority of photographers focus on the obvious. They believe and accept what their eyes tell them, and yet eyes know nothing.”

“I'm very hard on the art world just being a big business.”

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

“Photography is essentially an act of recognition by street photographers, not an act of invention. Photographers might respond to an old man’s face, or an Arbus freak, or the way light hits a building—and then they move on. Whereas in all the other art forms, take William Blake, everything that came to that paper never existed before. It’s the idea of alchemy, of making something from nothing.”

“In the West, people tend to look at life as spectators, but in the East, people are the thing.”

“I write in order to express what the photo itself cannot say. A photograph of my father doesn't tell me what I thought of him, which for me is much more important than what the man looked like.”

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

“To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.”

“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 think photographers are too polite. There is not enough anger in photography; it's pretty much trivialized.”

“All good children's books, I think, address metaphysical issues in some kind of way.”