W.M. Hunt

#somereallygoodones #duanemichals #realdreams

“Oh, that he were here to write me down an ass! 

But remember masters, that I am an ass, though it be not written down, yet not forget that I am an ass.” 

“Oh, that I had been writ down an ass!”

-William Shakespeare, “Much Ado About Nothing”, Act IV, Scene ii

The scene below is not reported verbatim but rather recalled through the shrouds of memory. 

The phone rings.

Me: “Hello.”

DM: “This is Duane … Michals.”

Me: “Wow.  Yes.  Wow.  (continuing incoherently) Yes …”

DM: “I wonder if you can help me.”

Me: “Yes, yes, yes (actually groveling).  Of course!”

DM: “You’re an actor, right?”

Me: “Yes.” 

DM: “I’m casting one of my short films, and I wonder …”

Me: “OH MY GOD.  YES, YES, YES.  I’d love to …”.

(pause)

DM: “I wonder if you know how to reach Glenn Close?”

(silence)

Write me down an unbelievable ass.  I didn’t and still don’t know how to reach Glenn Close.  Fuck her.

I also don’t know if The Duane has any memory of this exchange or how mortified I was in that moment when he seemed to offer and then to pluck away certain kingdoms of heaven.

For me, he always hangs the moon.  

Thirty or forty years ago — whenever I started looking at photographs seriously —  I was a total fan boy but completely guarded in anything having to do directly with The Duane.  With good reason it would prove as I was fearful of blathering in his  company.

One of the ways I recognize my seriousness about photography (and how it was impacting me) was my then obsession or at least commitment to his book “Real Dreams” (1976), his perfect marriage of feeling, thinking and photography.  I don’t know how this marvel entered my consciousness, but it offered clarity to me.  It is a numinous dream book: quirky, personal and, as the title says, real. 

I gifted the book to many, many people because it demonstrated in a way I could not yet know — how art genuinely happens.  The book’s modesty insists on intimacy.  It is confidential.  In “Real Dreams” I discovered the classic sequences like “A Man Going to Heaven (1967), “Death Comes to the Old Lady” (1969) and“The Spirit Leaves the Body” (1968).  These may have awakened in me the possibility of transcendence.

“Real Dreams” is The Duane’s “Book of Revelations," a letter to us that is insightful, prophetic and possibly apocalyptic, meaningful for me, especially because I have always had the sense of being a fraud and outsider.  

In the late 1970s or early 1980s I could observe the insular photography collecting scene at a remove, and I wasn’t much invested in the possibility of meeting, let alone, knowing The Duane.

I had seen one or two Michals’ exhibitions, and in 1978 had meekly presented myself at the Sidney Janis Gallery intent on buying a print of the geniuosly titled “Illuminated Man” (1968).  

Commerce ensued, and it came to live in my small potent collection of photographs.

In time — twenty years later — I managed to come across and acquire a variant of the “Illuminated Man” image — same model, Ted Titolo; same set up; same date but a different moment in time.  

That gave my collecting a bit more depth.

My life felt charmed when I discovered that if you bought the limited edition book of “A Visit with Magritte” (Matrix, 1981) for $100 at the International Center of Photography bookshop, it came with a print of the cover image!   Imagine.

About that visit — Michals to Magritte — he wrote “If I indulge myself and surrender to memory, I can still feel the knot of excitement that gripped me as I turned the corner into Rue Mimosas, looking for the house of René Magritte.  It was August 1965. I was 33 years old and about to meet the man whose profound and witty surrealist paintings had contradicted my assumptions about photography.” 

Inevitably — who knows when actually — there came my day of reckoning.  There was a photo event.  Those gatherings have never been overpopulated, and it wasn’t difficult to recognize or figure out who everyone else was, other than myself.  Importantly I ran into Janet Borden who was then a private dealer and a generous mentor to me as a collector.

And there was The Duane standing with her in some virtual spotlight.  Janet presented me.

There was a beat, and I dropped down on all fours, reached for and kissed the hem of his khakis.  It felt perfect although Duane shooed me away as if a big sloppy dog was drooling all over his pants or attempting to hump his leg.  Well, that was kind of what was happening.  

There were no words to speak.  Love is like that.

Write that one down. A-S-S.

More time passed, and I was working as an actor in a play in Pittsburgh, coincidentally The Duane’s childhood home.  I was idling away my daytimes during the run of the show and noticed a bird’s nest hanging from a branch of a tall tree outside my window.  The nest had lengths of colorful birthday present ribbon woven in its twigs and whatever, dangling and fluttering attractively in the breeze.  It was festive and a sweet detail in the unremarkable landscape of my life.

Then one day it was gone. I ran downstairs hoping I could find it.  Indeed it had survived intact, and I figured what the hell it might be a swell touch to the yawn of decor in my temporary housing upstairs.

It wasn’t a perfect fit aesthetically.  You can be broke and still have some standards.  It was better as a bird’s nest in a tree than as decor.  For some but no good reason I remembered that The Duane had a collection of bird’s nests.  Why not send it to him?  

I packed it up, found a home address and sat down to write the perfect note identifying myself as that overzealous young man on the floor at that reception hoping he would not think that I was a stalker or serial killer.  It was just me.

I recognized that the nest might not make it in one piece and I could imagine The Duane not knowing what to make of receiving an unsolicited UPS package, opening it and finding a handful of sticks, dead grass, a feather possibly and bits of ribbon. 

In response he resisted the opportunity to send me a lovely personalized silver print but opted to send a post card with a note in his distinctive hand.  The image on the postcard was one I had never seen.  That was unusual because I thought I knew his work thoroughly.   It was almost as good as a print because it was unique in my world.

In the image the sprocket holes in the end of the roll has left the image incomplete lending it a furtive, voyeuristic tone that it might lack if the image were actually complete.  It is as if 

we are looking through a keyhole and left wondering what we are actually witnessing.  

The experience made me very happy, and I didn't feel completely asinine.

I tell people that I have trouble with dates, but the truth is that I refuse to acknowledge the passing of time.  Chronologically the following episodes took place but I don’t know in what order.  Simply go with it please.

By the early 1990s I had become the Chairman of Photographers + Friends United against AIDS, and among other things, this marked a seminal change in my behavior.  I became single minded and energized in a way that I had never been as an actor.

Many people may still have considered me an ass, but it bothered me less. 

I was ambitious that P+FUAA produce a Holiday card as a fundraising device and for some visibility.  Gay and sympathetic to the cause, The Duane was the most obvious candidate to approach for an image. 

I pitched the idea.  Julie Gallant was on the board, and she owned Fotofolio with her partner Martin Bondell.  They would publish it, and The Duane was on board.  The production schedule was outlined for him, and as the deadline for printing it — for everything like promoting and selling and fulfilling orders — was upon us, but no Duane.

He was reported to be in Spain.  What to do?  What to do?  He appeared at the 11th hour with an image that was — um  — unfortunate.  Not good.  Not at all good.   

It was better than the earliest version of “Merry Christmouse leaves Santa a treat to eat” which seemed vaguely scatological as in a odd little stuffed rodent appeared to taken a dump on a dessert plate.  That got switched out for one that was pink.  He may have meant it to be red, but it was pink, definitely pink.

Only now is it funny.  It was not then, and it was not a success.  

Nonetheless I always seem to want some part of The Duane.  It is only pathetic if you think that my wanting that is a silly idea. 

I want him to love me.  

Actually I believe he does and perhaps I simply don’t know what I want.  Absolution?  More.  I don’t know.  He may be a spiritual father, but he is not a mind reader.  

For a number of years Photo District News had a practice of hiring me to visit art schools with their “30 Under 30” programs.  I was fun and funny and a reliable presenter for them, capable of offering respectable career advice with my thoughts on how to behave in post-school arena.  

I considered my counsel to be realistic: firm but supportive, somewhat aggressive.  One venue was SCAD, the unfortunate acronym for the Savannah College of Art and Design.  The other presenters were to be Scott Thode, who is one of the loveliest men in the world: photographer, husband and father, teacher, and then photo editor at Fortune magazine, and our clean up hitter, The Duane.

He was ferocious.

I have no memory of what he actually said, but it absolutely knocked the wind out of Scott and myself.  We didn’t know what had hit us.  It was dazzling.  He read the students the riot act.  “Do it.  Commit.  Don’t fuck around.  No half measures.  No bull shit”.  He was a bucket of very cold water, a wake up call for life.  I wish he had talked to me like that when I was twenty.  

Later I got to peek more closely when he let me bring a bunch of collectors to his Gramercy house as a fund raising event, but I only got to see the studio area not the residence proper.  I do think I met Fred, his longtime partner and now late husband.  I’m happy about that.  

Duane and I — I think I can lose the The part now — have had coffee and actual sit down dinners, even at my apartment, but I am so reluctant to intrude on him.

He was in Arles in the south of France a couple of summers ago for the annual photo festival in July.  I have had some personal success there so I like returning.  I knew he was coming and but hadn’t seen him until he was scheduled to speak one night in the old Roman amphitheater.

He was standing alone on the flat part of the stage taking a moment before beginning having been introduced.  I thought how marvelous for the audience because for most of them this would be their first encounter with Duane.  

There was an absolutely enormous and sublime full moon overhead.  Duane seemed absorbed in looking at the long shadow he cast on the ground when he suddenly wheeled around and exclaimed “Would you look at that fucking moon!”   

Perfect.  He had them at “fucking”.

A couple of years ago I got to write about him for the blog, “L’Oeil de la Photographie”* when he had a solo show of new work downtown at a gallery unfamiliar to me.  No Sidney Janis, Pace MacGill or DC Moore for him, but rather OSMOS and fierce and classic Duane.  

He is not one to wear his politics on his sleeve.

I wrote “The political atmosphere in the US is suffocating.  But the Unseen Eye is pleased to report that there is more than just a cool breeze coming in at OSMOS Address on the Lower Eastside.  Their Duane Michals’ “Anti-Trump, Agitprop” exhibition is a tsunami of relief that is both silly and not.

“The show is full of delights, although like all great clowns or tricksters, Michals is deadly serious here.  As the press release indicates it is the artist’s role is to speak truth to power which is done here by using the American president’s own words against himself.  

“Michals' rage and outrage with The Donald (Trump) are tempered by the quick fun to be had.  Working in sculpture and video for the first time, The Duane brings to it his zest, and irascibility and wackiness with the insanity and gravity of our times as his target.  

“The humorous titles are just right: ‘Handjob,' ‘The Bully’s Bullshit’, ‘The President Pinocchio Tree’, ‘Mar-A-Lago Pravda’, and “Miss Slovenia”.  These works are simple painted wooden cutouts or signs.  ‘Executive Odors’ appears to be a plate of desiccated poop.  

“Yet for The Eye, the most successful work is photographic.  

“ ‘At the Barricades (with Tim Soter)’ is a good looking print of The Duane in a top hat wearing a sandwich board. Mr. Soter would appear to be the actual photographer of record.  

“ ‘Rusky Business’ is a sequence of six color prints.  The Eye is certain that The Duane would want to think of this a sex-tych.  It depicts a series of fictional face-offs between The Donald and Vladimir Putin.  The Duane channels The Donald in what looks to be his ‘Sydney Sherman’ wig in action (channeling Cindy Sherman) with a not very convincing but nonetheless shirtless stand-in for the Russian president.  

“Duane Michals has been an inspiration and hero to a couple of generations of photographers and followers.  He is the master story teller with a fantasist’s sense of wonder and a truth teller’s exasperation.  

“Long ago he offered classic advice in his guise of ‘Dr. Duanus’.  'Don't try to be an artist: try to be true.  If your vision is honest, art will find you.’

“The OSMOS storefront was once a notorious saloon, and it may be haunted by the spirit of anarchist and activist Emma Goldman.  Appropriately she left the door open for The Duane.”

I’m happy with what I wrote.   Remembering him at SCAD, I am most struck by his outspokenness, at the root of which is his outrage or his rage.  He insists on engagement, and he sets the example.  It’s the daunting part of Duane.

I regret not hopping on a plane and going to his major Carnegie Museum — mid-career — show in his childhood Pittsburgh in 2014.  The catalogue is a worthy place holder.  It would be the loveliest thing if there were to be a “Museum of The Duane” that one could drop on in for a periodic affirming shot of life.  

His ongoing and prolific video making keeps him sharp and infront of an audience.  I hope his recent “Illusions of the Photographer: Duane Michals at the Morgan (Library)” is not a coda to anything but rather a victory lap that hasn’t left him breathlezss but rather adrenalized as he races on.

He is, at this writing, an ongoing powerhouse of industry of imagination and creativity. 

I ♥ Duane. 

* "L’Oeil de la Photographie,” 15 June 2017

“I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was.  Man is but an ass if he go about to expound his dream.”

-William Shakespeare, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, Act IV, Scene I

Published by Dancing Bear Books

Text © W.M. Hunt 2022

Photographs © Duane Michals 2022