Duane Michals / portrait inspiration

 Showing the things we cannot see, an interview with Duane Michals | SelfSelector

Duane Michals - High Museum of Art

He is an American photographer who uses multiple exposures in portrait photography to create beautiful worldviews. His series of works contain stories that capture our interest when we see them. 

The image on the top left is one of the photos that inspired me. The photo itself is simple and easy to post-production. But there is something attractive about it. When I thought about what it was, I thought it was a way of directing the viewer's perspective. This photo gets smaller as you move towards the middle. Therefore, the viewer's perspective moves towards the center and focuses on the face in the center. I applied this to create a work. In this photo, the photos get smaller as you move to the bottom left, and the largest and smallest ones are colored, while the others are monochrome. This leads the viewer's eye to the large face (top right) first, and then gradually foczuses on the image on the bottom left. Since the colored parts tend to attract attention, I created two colored dots and made the area between them black and white to improve the balance. 

Next is the photo on the top right. I was also inspired by this photo. After researching, I found out that it was a portrait of the master of surrealism, Rene Magritte. Through the idea of ​​surrealism, his work seems to reflect the true nature of his subjects and their thoughts. In this photo, multiple exposure is used, superimposing his figure with a chair and background. The multiple exposure makes his color pale and gives him a fantastical atmosphere. This is my personal interpretation, but I was intrigued by how it seems to transfer the subject's life onto the canvas. I tried taking a photo based on this photo. By making the subject semi-transparent, the sense of reality was lost and it felt more mysterious. So I popped up just the glasses to adjust the ratio of the mysterious feeling to the reality. At first I made everything black and white, but the easel had a lot of color on it and that was beautiful, so I added color to the easel that supports the canvas.

This photo uses multiple exposures and gives off a mysterious impression, just like the previous image. The eyes are closed, so it feels real, but also like a dream. I think this image gives off a slightly dark impression. This photo made an impression on me not only of portraits, but also of my self-portraits. All of his works seem real, but there is something unnatural about them that I think is what makes them interesting. I wanted to use that in my own photos. 

In the self-portrait, I prepared many hands to express a mysterious feeling in reality. In the portrait, I tried to escape from reality by overlapping images, and by growing many hands, I made it look like a Buddha, which is believed to be in Buddhism.

According to my research, his style of work, Surrealism, is an art movement that originated in France in the 1920s, and aims to express the unconscious and dream world. I learned that it is characterized by the creation of fantastical and mysterious images without being bound by the logic or common sense of reality.

I realized that this style is what is so appealing about him. I was able to use this in my work, so this piece became my favorite.

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