Janis Klimanovs Annotation

Dr Duanus

Duane Michals born February 18, 1932 is an American photographer. Michals' work makes innovative use of photo-sequences, often incorporating text to examine emotion and philosophy. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Michals)

He is one of the most appealing and influential founders of staged photography. Having started in the sixties with short stories about the human side of life. Love, dreams, fears and also disappointments were his themes. He is telling stories portraying the inner sides of the human existence and humor is very typical in his work. ( Nederlands Foto Museum: http://bit.ly/qRTF76)

The exhibition Dr. Duanus was presented in Nederlands Foto Museum from September 18 last year to January 2, 2011. It contained various pieces of his work. The exhibited work was introduced with the first old photo series, made as sequenced stories about dreamy and funny situations of life. Black and white photos were placed in rows on the walls in the eye hight, they were nicely printed on A5 and A4 formats each placed in a mat and classically framed in black frames with glass. The exhibition continued with staged artist, painter's Magritte portraits and self-portraits. Many photographs were combined with descriptions that were a big part of the art pieces. All the writings and signatures usually were hand written, increasing the value of the art pieces.

The exhibition ended with photo parodies in different sizes of well-known artists and their work, for example a nice large format photograph of a cucumber smirking about German large format photographer Gursky works or a serie of Dr Duan dressed up as the American legendary photographer Cindy Sherman in a serie making a parody and story line of it. In the end of the hall hanged in a nice half circle format recent photographs about Japanese iconography inspired by color photography. In the book store of the Museum it is possible to buy almost all his books, but especially recommended is the last one by Duane Michals' "Foto Follies" 2008. How photography lost it's virginity on the way to the bank.