How Photography Lost Its Virginity on the Way to the Bank:

[tim atherton]

for all the artyfarty-phobes out there...:

http://photo-muse.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-photography-lost-its-virginity-on.html

:)

[Walter Calahan]

This is why I've always been drawn to Duane Michals' art. There's no BS.

[Bill_1856]

This is why I've always been drawn to Duane Michals' art. There's no BS.

I've always thought that it's PURE BS.

[Vaughn]

I've always thought that it's PURE BS.

That's only because you're paying attention ;)

Having met the man and seen his work, we could use a lot more of this type of BS!

Vaughn

[Eric Rose]

Ah come on, you mean the beard I want to grow and piano lessons I want to take plus the floppy hat won't make me a great landscape photographer!

[Vaughn]

Ah come on, you mean the beard I want to grow and piano lessons I want to take plus the floppy hat won't make me a great landscape photographer!

No...ya gotta marry the daughter of a gallery owner, too.:D

[Michael Graves]

Personally, I love Duane Michaels...both his work and his personality. He spoke at a college I attended a couple of decades ago and I decided two things. He was a great person and a poor influence. His work is sufficiently unique that to produce something similar could only make you look like you were trying to follow in his footsteps. The technical quality of his prints (those he had with him, anyway) was superb, but it was the image content that grabbed your eye. These two factors made for a marvelous display.

But that's the beauty of analyzing other photographers work. I hate Cindy Sherman (as apparently so does he) and some of you hate Duane Michaels. Is there ANYONE out there that we ALL love?

[MIke Sherck]

Is there ANYONE out there that we ALL love?

We all love you, Michael. :D

Mike

[George Kara]

Hasn't photography always been a commercial medium?

I thought this was the reason so many clickers are insecure about it being an art form.

Art in photography seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

[Greg Lockrey]

Hasn't photography always been a commercial medium?

I thought this was the reason so many clickers are insecure about it being an art form.

Art in photography seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

Spoken like a painter.:D


I'm getting to like you, George. :eek:

[paulr]

Anyone who likes mocking the artsy-fartsy in photography MUST rent John Waters' "Pecker."

Waters was brilliant enough to cast Cindy Sherman as herself.

[tim atherton]

damn - I'd forgotten Pecker - it's good

(though I realise I never really needed to learn what tea-bagging was...!)

[Michael Alpert]

Duane Michals is not Merleau-Ponty. He is a fine quirky photographer who has done very well within the world that he is quick to spoof. I guess the question is, where does Duane Michals's sort of rhetoric (or at least the rhetoric in his new book) lead? Does it really matter if some photographers are promoted by NY art galleries? Much of the world cannot afford an Aspirin for a toothache (I mean this literally). Unfortunately, Michals is right about his subject, and his subject is himself.

[tim atherton]

Oh, I think Michals knows he's having fun at his own as well as others expense. He's playing a sort of Stanley Kubrick game of people watching people watching people

[Duane Polcou]

My name is Duane Michael Polcou, really. When I was a kid, everyone called me Duane Michael for short, to distinguish me from my father , also named Duane (as we had different middle names I was technically not a "junior"). When I became interested in photography, I eventually became aware of Duane Michaels. I've often wanted to visit Duane Michaels and say "Thanks. As if Duane isn't enough of redneck cracker 1/2 of the Allman Brothers don't know which spelling to use Duane-Dwayne-D'wayne fucked up name, YOU have to go and slap it on all your homo erotic sweaty buttocks pictures." Delightful.

[Scott Davis]

My name is Duane Michael Polcou, really. When I was a kid, everyone called me Duane Michael for short, to distinguish me from my father , also named Duane (as we had different middle names I was technically not a "junior"). When I became interested in photography, I eventually became aware of Duane Michaels. I've often wanted to visit Duane Michaels and say "Thanks. As if Duane isn't enough of redneck cracker 1/2 of the Allman Brothers don't know which spelling to use Duane-Dwayne-D'wayne fucked up name, YOU have to go and slap it on all your homo erotic sweaty buttocks pictures." Delightful.

Hey- at least you're not named Billy-Bob Ray Polcou. Or John Wayne Gacy Polcou.

[Louie Powell]

Personally, I love Duane Michaels...The technical quality of his prints (those he had with him, anyway) was superb, but it was the image content that grabbed your eye.


I had always thought that Duane Michaels was cynical sourpuss. Then, he curated a show at a gallery in Albany many years ago, and for the first time I had an opportunity to hear him speak. The man is hysterical! He is a keen observer of the humanity around him with a wild sense of humor.

He has a summer home in Cambridge, NY. Hubbard Hall is a highly-respected amateur theater in Cambridge. A couple of years ago we stumbled onto a show of cast photographs that he had done for Hubbard Hall in a local gallery. I suspect those photographs have never been shown anywhere else, and certainly not in a New York gallery. Wow! Wonderful photographs - both in terms of content and technical quality.

[claudiocambon]

I don't think he actually "hates" the work of other photographers he is lampooning. I take it more that he is mocking the inflated value accorded to these works by contemporary collectors. I compare this to what has happened to me as an occasional basball fan, namely that my childhood favorite players' athletic accomplishments have slowly become rivalled by their astronomical salary; today kids trade those figures as if they were a performance stat like home runs or ERA, and it didn't used to be like that. I think that the absurdly huge prices that have come to be paid for people's work are starting to distort perceptions of relative artistic merit for many of us in the field. Yes, photography has always been commercialized, and the prices have slowly been inching up over the last 2 decades, but it never got to the point where the dominant concern, or determining factor was money. Somehow I feel that critical judgment within the community carried a lot of weight, and it still will, but the big money is a new factor which, deplorably, will inform people's perceptions significantly. So, Michaels' jabs are welcome, and people may well laugh at them, even if they are on their way to the bank...:D