DUANE MICHALSA VISIT WITH MAGRITTE
Steidl
october 2010
“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 Margritte’s 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.
