We highly recommend viewing the slideshow in “full-screen” mode.
The philosophical “Questions Without Answers” is among the many books published by Duane Michals. But the title could just as easily apply to his relationship with his steelworker father, who invariably offered the same curt reply to young Sonny, as he was known growing up in McKeesport, Pa.
“My father drank and smoked a lot, and if I asked him a question, he would always say, ‘Go look it up,’ ” Mr. Michals, 81, recalled last week. “I got used to going to dictionaries and books. I loved pirate stories, where I imagined myself as Bruce, the cabin boy. I always loved to read.”
That love of the written word is a hallmark of Mr. Michals’s oeuvre, which has been published in some 30 books and exhibited in hundreds of shows. Famed for his dreamy, wry and philosophical narrative series, which feature hand-written, provocative thoughts, he has gone beyond the image itself in his quest to engage eye and mind with heart and soul. Art, he says, should be vulnerable.
Fittingly, a current show of his work at New York’s Osmos Address, “Duane Michals: Open Book,” lets viewers examine how he put together some of his best-known work. Entire drawers are filled with scraps of paper — from hotel note pads to subscription cards — on which he jotted down thoughts when they occurred to him. Others show how he wrote — and edited — some of the passages for “Questions Without Answers” and other books. They also show the breadth of his work, from Op-Ed illustrations to fashion spreads for Anne Klein or Yves Saint Laurent.
“I think Duane is happy because every artist should get to show their work like this,” said Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, the show’s curator and the founder of Osmos, which produces books, magazines and exhibits. “The idea of using narrative, whether in commercial photography or fine art, is his signature. It depicts his interest in books, which are a narrative platform.”
Duane Michals, courtesy of the DC Moore Gallery, New York, and Osmos, New York “I could see it quite clearly in his palm. There would be a terrible tragedy. My love could not protect him.” 1979.Duane is happy. Visiting the gallery last Friday, he was smiling and outgoing, taking you into his confidence with a joke or a hand on your shoulder. Books were a wondrous thing to him as he grew up, even more so when he discovered Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” which he bought with money saved from his paper route.
“His lover was a man!” Mr. Michals said. “He opened up my mind. He said things about the Buddha. In McKeesport there wasn’t a single Buddhist in the entire town.”
That same town would be the setting for the images that comprised his earliest series, like “Death Comes to the Old Lady.” They are intimate and confessional, taken among family, which he would later enshrine in the book “The House I Once Called Home,” and feature vintage images with later scenes inside the empty, decaying house.
“Photographers love houses that are falling down, but they never know who lived there,” Mr. Michals said. “Young photographers go across America to take pictures of the same filling station in Peoria, but they never see what’s close to them. It’s easy to see the exotic. But to see your own environment, it never even occurs to them.”
Seeing deeply what is in front of you is at the heart of these series. When he started writing on the pictures, it was his attempt to go beyond the image.
“I had to write about all the things you couldn’t see,” he said. “The artist has to make a leap of faith to insight, otherwise it’s just description.”
The show reveals him as someone who is always working, jotting down thoughts as soon as they enter his mind. A conversation with him, filled with asides and digressions, reveals him to be still engaged in various projects, including a coming show in France of painted photographs and the screening of a documentary film, “The Man Who Invented Himself.”
Not one to be “hip and cool,” Mr. Michals accepts that he is more popular in France than in New York, where he has lived for years, the last 53 with his partner, Fred. That kind of admission gives new insight to when he talks about how art should break your heart.
“My longtime friend of 53 years has a combination of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s,” he said. “I am in a state of grief dealing with these issues. That is the most real emotion you can experience in life. But I’ve always been interested in what something feels like as well as how it looks like.”
Not to mention the questions it raises.
He embarked on “Questions Without Answers,” his reflections on life, death, God and other existential topics, when he wondered why his assistants didn’t ask questions. When he showed the work in Montreal, one reviewer got worked up.
“He said who the hell is Duane Michals to pose these questions? Who picked him to pose them for you?” Mr. Michals said. “He was wrong. Anybody with a brain should be asking these questions.”
Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, courtesy of Osmos Duane Michals sorts through his work.“Duane Michals: Open Book” will be on view through Nov. 9 at Osmos Address, 50 East First Street in Manhattan.
Follow @dgbxny and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.
