DUANE MICHALS: THE THEATRE OF REAL LIFE - PHOTO STORIES IN DUISBURG [2004]

Klartext Verlag [2004]. Hardcover, 151pp. 21.5 x 27.5 cm. Text in English & German.

Published to accompany Michals' exhibition in Duisburg which took place between 25. April - 16. May 2004.

In the 1960s Duane Michals established a whole new direction in photography, in which the image is combined with text and no longer stands alone as an autonomous picture, but only unfolds its meaning as part of a series. Furnished with hand-written comments, his photographs often evolve into surreal sequences, which tell stories about existential moments in life: about living and dying, about innocence and longing, about the unknown and the remembered.

For his photo project "The Theatre of Real Life" - 138 photographs in two large series - Michals accompanied a German family and a Kurdish family from Turkey during the course of they everyday lives in Duisburg-Marxloh. The photo stories exemplify the same paradox that forms a thread running through all of Michals' work: life is at once reality and fiction, it is both staged and random, it is commonplace and yet special. 

"Life is a drama," says Michals, and shows us that not only the major junctures such as birth and death, or emotions like love and hate, desire and violence define our lives - but that it's precisely the prosaic that lends itself to drama, those everyday moments that we tend to overlook since they happen all the time, everywhere in the world, over and over again.

With essays by Soke Dinkla, Christoph Ribbat, Klaus Honnef and Viktor Oskar Schneider. There is also an interview with the artist, biography and bibliography.

Scarce.

Unread copy. Minimal surface wear to the covers from handling and storage.