A Visit with Magritte

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 Rene Magritte. It was August, 1965. I was thirty-three years old and about to meet the man whose profound and witty surrealist paintings had contradicted my assumptions about photography. This book records Michals visit with the great Belgian painter of inverse worlds and bizarre hybrid forms. Michals invites the viewer to follow him on the exciting journey to the private sphere of an artist who at the time inspired and intimidated him. The still lifes taken in Margrittes house and the portraits of the inhabitants, Margritte and his wife, are distant and intimate, private and representative, humorous and calm at the same time. They reflect the high respect the man behind the camera felt for the subjects of his pictures. Duane Michals, born in 1932 made significant, creative strides in the field of photography. In the 1960s, an era heavily influenced by photojournalism and its aesthetic, Michals manipulated the medium to communicate narratives using a distinctive pictorial technique. In 1970 the Museum of Modern Art, New York, hosted Michalss first solo exhibition. Since then his work has been widely exhibited and it has received numerous awards. Duane Michals lives and works in New York City.