Duane Michals Quotes

In portrait photography there is something more profound that we seek inside a person, while being painfully aware that a limitation of our medium is that the inside is recordable only insofar as it is apparent on the outside...Very often what lies behind the facade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe.

Dreams change, yes, that makes sense, but I didn't know dreams could hide inside a person.

When I look in the mirror, I see a woman with secrets. When we don’t listen to our intuition, we abandon our souls. And we abandon our souls because we are afraid if we don’t, others will abandon us.

[Making movies] you're not trying to capture reality, you're trying to capture a photograph of reality.

The eyes are the mirror of the soul and reflect everything that seems to be hidden; and like a mirror, they also reflect the person looking into them.

I would tell them that when you look at a person, you never know what the're hiding.

A person's true nature will reveal itself despite disguise.

Rare are the people who can capture a human being.

Essentially what you're doing is collaborating with the photographer to create an image that reflects the fashion you're trying to capture and also hold a mirror up to the zeitgeist at the moment.

Somewhere inside me there’ll always be the person I am to-night

I do not care about my own appearance, but I would hope that people could see into my soul, and that is presented better in these photographs than in others. (On his self-portraits)

A man is like a two-story house. The first floor is equipped with an entrance and a living room. On the second floor is every family member's room. They enjoy listening to music and reading books. On the first underground floor is the ruin of people's memories. The room filled with darkness is the second underground floor.

The easy bit is picking up a camera and pointing and shooting. But then you have to decide what it is you’re trying to say and express.

Only her tight, tight eyes were left. They were always left...They were everything. Everything was there, in them...Thrown, in this way, into the binding conviction that only a miracle could relieve her, she would never know her beauty. She would see only what there was to see: the eyes of other people.

The seen and seeing softly mutually strike Their glass barrier that arrests the sight. But the world's being hides in the volcanoes And the foul history pressed into its core; And to myself my being is my childhood And passion and entrails and the roots of senses; I'm pressed into the inside of a mask At the back of love, the back of air, the back of light.

Photography is all about secrets... The secrets we all have and will never tell.

The heart's hushed secret in the soft dark eye.

I'm actually not so sure what I'm hoping to find making photographs. You always want to come back with an image that's interesting visually, and you hope to get something from the person you photograph that's different than other images you know of these people. I don't know how I go about it. I also don't know how exactly what I set out to get other than these two things.

(...) And metaphors like cats behind your smile, Each one wound up to purr, each one a pride, Each one a fine gold beast you've hid inside (...)

The mirror can lie. Doesn't show you what's inside. And it, it can tell you you're full of life. It's amazing what you can hide just by putting on a smile.

I'm trying to use the camera to get into people's heads. I use camera techniques a lot to articulate character.

The human face does not always reflect the beauty that may repose in the soul.

I knew then that the person on the outside was only a shell, a presence to be seen and provoked. Inside was the real me, where my tears joined the tears of all the sad people to form the three waterfalls in the night country.

The purpose of soul questions is to open yourself deeper and deeper until all that is left is the power and beauty you are bringing to the lives of others.

Herein lies the main objective of portraiture and also its main difficulty. The photographer probes for the innermost. The lens sees only the surface... .